Declarations
by writerfan2013
Summary: Holmes and Watson and not saying what you mean. Chapter 15 - Fierce Heart. Now- Chapter 16 - The laughter of glass. Can things be the same? The end. More soon though. And please let me know if you liked this! Thanks -Sef
1. Rejection

"Believe me when I say that I care for you most sincerely, but mine is not a romantic attachment. I do not love you, Watson, in the way that that word is commonly understood. And although a sexual element to our relationship might bring both gratification and convenience, I believe it would ultimately be detrimental to our partnership, our productivity.

"I am truly sorry if this causes you any distress -"

"Are you talking to yourself?"

I jump.

A presence behind me, a shadow cast in the light from the hallway. A faint waft of Guerlain - Mitsouko, her favourite.

"Watson! I didn't hear you come in." I genuinely didn't. I was engrossed, mortifyingly so. How long has she been standing there?

"I've been standing here five minutes." She is soft spoken, almost always. But the low timbre of her voice carries as far as any more strident tone. And her tone now is wry.

"Ah." Rapid thought. Recollection of oft-rehearsed refusal of Watson's imagined romantic advances. _Did I use her name? Yes. Drat_. An excuse is required - none immediately presents itself.

"Were you pretending to - turn me down?" She steps into the dim warmth of the living room. I check her body language - no need to disguise this action, she knows I do it. So: arms loose at sides (no accusation), jaw in normal range of half-clench-to-clench (no special tension, just the decades-old habit from a high stress job), feet set at shoulder-width apart (a challenge, but well within the parameters of our daily banter.) She wears an air of piqued curiosity, and displays no sign of hurt. There is a possible layer of amusement in her voice, but with her expression she is doing her Mona Lisa thing: impossible to read. I am increasingly certain that this opaque expression is deliberate and controlled - some (vain) attempt to wrest back her personal privacy.

_Think_.

"You formed a mere convenient object for a poorly remembered speech heard on a radio programme some time back. It contained elements pertinent to a case." Highly implausible but, being me, the more probable for all that.

"Oh, what are you working on?" Her heels clack on our wood floor. She has been out for dinner, at a tapas place which overdoes the garlic, with girlfriends, - no overt make up, hair loose- including one woman who has a young baby - no mistaking the floral-chemical stench of the nappy bag. "Is it a new case?"

_The mysterious case of my embarrassing fixation with Watson and a fantasised rejection._ Give airy wave. "Nothing of note, and now I have thought of that speech, it's clear there was nothing in it."

She stands, her hair a fall of black untouched by firelight, her eyes steady. I remain seated in the pink wing chair, and maintain my mild expression. Watson can read me too, on a good day. She frowns at me. "Ok. Good. You know, Sherlock - "

She comes close to my fireside chair, obliging me to look up at her. I am, I realise, lit by the flames; she is silhouetted, her features in near darkness.

She hesitates. Surely she is not going to use this as an opportunity to discuss the - unusual, fond, equal, professional, intimate, awkward - nature of our relationship?

She is. "You don't need to worry about having to let me down," she says quietly. "It will never happen."

"I know," I say. Do I, though?

She smiles. "You want some tea?"

"Yes. Thank you."

She goes to the kitchen and I hear the kettle clang onto the stove before I realise that her statement, and my response, could be taken several ways.

Hmn.

I am still contemplating meanings when the phone rings. Watson answers, and comes up to the library holding out the handset. "He's British. And he says he's your cousin."


	2. Dosage

The superfood sweet potato, bred in labs by the killer's firm, was extremely rich in vitamin A. This beneficial vitamin is nonetheless lethal in quantity and the victim's eventual liver damage can be directly linked to the sustained overdose administered under the guise of nurturing home cooked food.

"Pretty cold," Watson observes as I complete my summary of our latest case.

We are in the kitchen. It is mid morning, and we have only recently arrived back at the brownstone after many hours of deduction and pursuit.

"Your ruthless killers are rarely known for their warmth," I say. I reach for the coffee canister and flip open the lid. "Also it's quite unusual for murderers to invest such a lot of effort in meal preparation. This case demonstrates long term planning which I confess I find impressive." I dump coffee into the machine, and pluck two mugs from the drainer.

"Harder to detect," Watson agrees. "A regular poison would have been fast-acting and suspicious - and picked up in post mortem tox tests. This way, it seemed like natural causes were to blame." She is leaning against the edge of the table, arms folded, her gaze on me. There are shadows beneath her eyes.

"And yet we recognised the victim's death as murder and uncovered both the means and the killer. A satisfying few days' work." I measure water into the coffee maker. "I intend to celebrate by completing my paper on the self-destructive behaviours of zoo animals and how it relates to recidivism in American prisoners within days of their release." Also, I have flights to book. A trip to the UK, for the funeral of my aunt. A depressing task which will not be improved by delay.

Watson smiles, a small motion of tolerant amusement - at me, I realise. "You rest by working," she remarks.

"I do not distinguish between the various topics which interest me," I say. Also, the concept of rest means something particular to most people. It implies idleness and blankness, two states which I have rarely, if ever, achieved. Watson would not like either of the only means I ever found to approach them.

She nods, and crosses to the counter where I am willing the coffee machine to work more quickly. The noise of percolation rattles through the kitchen. I wonder if there is sufficient distinction between the noises made by one machine and another of the same model, to switch them without detection. It could be another way to introduce danger (but what, using a coffee machine?) into a benign-seeming domestic situation.

My own domestic situation has, of late, begun to make me aware of many perils. It is interesting, but requires extreme caution.

Watson reaches her hand towards me and removes the mug I set out for her. I stay still, wary, as her arm brushes my chest en route. But she moves away, to the sink.

I glance sideways at her. She has, still, some reserves of energy. One cup of coffee, at the strength I prefer, would enable her to continue being productive for hours yet. We could then sleep this evening, retaining a so-called normal pattern of daytime wakefulness.

"You go ahead," she says softly, indicating my mug. "But I need to crash."

I hesitate. She is depriving herself of many hours of activity. The brain functions at a higher capacity during hours when natural light is available. My sense of duty towards her tells me I ought to encourage her (instruct her) to drink the coffee and complete this week's reading material.

She is filling the mug with tap water. Her hands, usually so deft and certain, are slack and clumsy on the tap, and water sputters out over her sleeves. She frowns in annoyance, but listlessly lifts the filled mug to her lips, making no move to dry her shirt.

Clearly her fatigue has progressed beyond the point where she would be able to respond positively to a reminder of the body's ability to overcome exhaustion. A pity, as company while I write can be beneficial, (especially regarding the provision of warm drinks without the need for me to break concentration), and I really want her to get to the next book in her stack. It represents an important step in our partnership.

However, her exhaustion is a fact. To press my point would be foolish. Watson's wrath, particularly when tired, tends towards the comically aggressive, and we are in the kitchen where there are many hard objects she could grab and hurl at my head. I will not urge her to stay awake.

Watson has noticed my observation. She sighs and puts down her mug. She takes a step closer to me and again reaches out. I tense - I do not require physical reassurance or congratulation, and its introduction leads only to awkwardness - but instead of hugging or patting me, she merely picks up the coffee jug and fills my mug. "Have fun," she says, and her eyes dart about, taking in my own eyes and forehead (standard platonic triangle of attention when in conversation with a colleague or friend) - and then her gaze drops, to my mouth, and still down, to my hands, curled at my sides, and back to my eyes. It is a microsecond's change of focus, a flicker of eyelashes, but it is intriguing.

Her doctor's instinct. She is still tending to my physical well-being, even though this is outside our agreement and I released her from all obligations pertaining to my health. A habit of the medical professional.

"I am perfectly well, Watson," I say.

She gives a tiny head shake (disagreeing with my self assessment, or unable to reconcile her sanity with her current choice of living arrangements?) and smiles again. The dark of her eyes holds care and enrichment, just like that modified sweet potato. Would increased exposure result in overdose?

She moves away, taking her mug with her. "Night."

"Yes," I say, and press my warm coffee mug to my lip as she departs.

**Author's Note:**  
There was an article on the BBC News site yesterday about so called superfoods and their many times multiplied vitamin content. A sweet potato featured. The piece didn't say anything about the risk of overdose of these fortified foods - presumably the inventors have considered that? - so the Vitamin A poisoning idea is just in my head. But killing through apparent kindness is a well known murder method - e.g. the case of the porridge lovingly made with a teaspoon of salt and fed to the victim every day until the salt reached lethal levels - and this new GM/intensively bred superfood development could provide more examples in the future... -Sef


	3. Frosted glass

I have been in love. I have been in hate. I have been in joy and pain and rage but now I am in a barely tolerated state of frustration because the system which punishes the many for the misdeeds of the few is in full flow at Heathrow and I am having to positively prove that I am not a smuggler, rather than the authorities being required to positively prove that I am.

I am in a queue.

Watson is beside me, but six feet away in another line. She keeps smiling and looking significantly at me as if to say, it's all fine, the fact that age is withering us as we wait is completely immaterial, you will enjoy demonstrating your innocence and having a surly Brit comment on how you have lost your accent since being over there.

I return her look with one which says, I am suffering beyond your comprehension but I will help you understand when we emerge from this hell and into a fresh one where I make you give the cabbie directions in a strange city and insist that you contradict him at every roundabout and one way street.

She simply smiles and swings carelessly from side to side, the very picture of insouciance. And in a flash I see our life together, Watson so calm and strong, me clenched and working, always striving for that thing which is ever beyond my reach.

In ten years what will we be? Fifty. Busy. Working. In the brownstone, which perhaps by then I will have purchased or inherited. When I shave everything I see on the razor will be grey. Watson will look exactly the same, cheekbones slightly more defined, weariness around the eyes slightly more pronounced when she looks at me. Beauty intact. Strength, probably, increased, through long exposure to New York City and me.

If she stays.

The line blurs around me. Of course it is not a given that our partnership, the most daring proposal I have ever conceived, will last. I have deduced much of Watson's motivation for beginning it, but what of her reasons to stay? I do not make predictions. I can only assess probabilities. What is the likelihood that a person such as she, with a brilliant mind, years of experience in her first chosen profession, and friends and family close by to love her, would choose to continue her association with a person whose very existence is in doubt because of their history of drug abuse? I am consumed by the work and this will continue until I die, but will Watson continue?

I hope so, but I am fully aware that at some point I will once again be thrown on my own resources. I must not relax. I must recall, every moment, that I need to be able to do all this alone, as much as I would prefer not to. I am able.

Yet everything is simpler with Watson at my side. It is as if she relieves the pressure on my brain, my mind, and allows me just to work, without the crowding in of my most destructive thoughts and desires. I have yet to pinpoint it, but working alongside Watson is like escaping from a crowded room into a cool bright space where there is no sound or colour. She is a protection against intrusion.

I am next at my booth. I glance across. She is there too, holding her passport for the man in the glass box, smiling and speaking.

Our lives. Her private one. Mine on display, no secret or artifice, only my work, only what defines me. Without it - unimaginable. Yet without Watson, now, having experienced her contribution - not unimaginable, of course, but highly undesirable.

The immigration officer takes my passport and looks me up and down.

Watson is through, on UK soil, smiling and free in the place she has chosen to visit with me. She relishes the puzzle we have ahead of us, she relishes, probably, the favour I called in to get us the fifty-fourth floor suite at the Shard, she is in no need of me whatsoever. As long as she is at my side it is because she chooses to be.

Ah, the comfort and the dread of free will!

If I told her of my thoughts, my doubts, my desire for her to stay, I am certain that she would. She would try, at any rate. But her unwilling presence would not impart the same value to my work as her eager companionship does now. I want her to resent the weekly booklist, to hurl hard objects at my head when I infuriate her, to earn her own accomplishments without my coercion. Doing it out of duty would dull her senses and jar against mine.

No. My complex, difficult, needy feelings towards her must remain obscure in order that she pursue the work for her own sake, as she does at present. I want her to stay. But she must appear as a mere convenience to me, for the psychology of our partnership to work.

The immigration officer is squeezing one side of his mouth into a sarcastic grimace. "Well?"

Watson's slim figure vanishes behind the frosted glass doors.

I blink. She is a misty figure beyond sight or touch, a shadow I cannot grasp. "Right, yes." But despite my partner's ethereal qualities, the situation is really very simple. Maintain the status quo, regardless of complicated fantasies, in order to retain Watson's considerable skills. "Nothing to declare."


	4. The life less loved

_The nicest thing anyone has ever said to me._

That is how Watson phrased it. I told her, quite truthfully, that _she_ was the difference, the thing which had changed between my contemplating (purposefully planning) the murder of Irene's killer, and my acceptance that whatever I discovered about that person the police must become involved.

This recollection is pertinent here, now, in London. There are two reasons for our visit, and I must hope that the second reason never materialises.

The first reason is part of why I am standing in the sky looking at a newly created view over Britain's capital city and ignoring the discreetly extended hand of the porter who walked next to us from the lift to the suite's front door.

Watson sighs and gets out her purse. She tips him (for what? Keeping us company? We carried our own small pieces of luggage) and sends him on his way as I prowl the suite looking for clues.

"This is amazing," Watson says. She steps delicately across the white carpet to the window. This fenestration comprises the entire inward sloping wall of our hotel room. "Wow," she says softly.

I know she is not greatly affected by material things, but this place is beyond wealth and into fantasy. Were it not for my assistance with a case involving the sister of one of the Qatari property developers responsible for the Shard, I would never be able to stay here. Watson's surgeon's salary might have allowed it, but I have my doubts.

I watch as she inspects the suite, smiling in the realisation that for once we are doing something in a relatively normal way. I smile too but turn away before she sees.

The door frame is chipped. It has been painted over rather than filled. And the rug just beneath the repaired chip is a newer replacement than the ones around it. A glass was hurled at the wall, here, in a fit of anger. A glass filled with expensive champagne. Damage to the premium suite so soon after opening? A pity, and a sign of some bad behaviour.

I sniff the carpet beneath the rug. Dom Perignon. Recent too.

Although there is nothing to link these clues with my present suspicions, I feel depressingly certain that Irene, as I still think of her, has been here.

"Don't look so gloomy," Watson says. "This is great."

"Yes," I say and go to check that nothing unexpected awaits us in the bedroom. This trip was unplanned - how could it be otherwise (ideas strike, but I set them aside in irritation, the brain going overboard again) and Irene could not have known we were coming.

The bedroom is fine. "You have this room," I tell Watson. "I will sleep tonight on the more than adequate sofa in the main room."

"Are you sure?"

"Completely."

She comes to stand next to me, puts her hand on my arm. "Sherlock, are you ok? I know you said you weren't close to your aunt but - "

"Do not concern yourself, Watson. It is merely the plane journey, the reason for our being here, the frankly overpowering opulence of this place. Always gives me a melancholy feeling to be surrounded by so much ostentation." I give her a cheery grin, not that she is fooled.

She eyes me suspiciously but says, "Well, thank you. You didn't have to pull strings to get us this room and I'm glad you did. "

"You're accompanying me to an unpleasant and compulsory family event. It was the least I could do," I say.

She is touched by this - her expression softens, and again I think of my rare compliments to her work. She says nothing.

How much care and attention has anyone ever paid to Watson, really? I am not known for my nurturing manner yet she responds to any small crumb of praise as if it is a treasured gift.

She has not often been told how good she is. She does not have low self esteem... She is self contained. Yet she has rarely had the pleasure of outside confirmation of her own abilities.

I have charged myself to provide that reassurance whenever appropriate.

Of the two of us it is possible that Watson has led the life less loved.

For someone who is now my member of staff, this is unacceptable. I consider it my duty towards her to bring her into a proper appreciation of her talents and her importance... (Her importance to me. To this case, of which she is as yet happily unaware.)

I stare at the back of her head as she unpacks in the bedroom until she says, "What," without looking round.

"Just contemplating the nature of praise, gratitude and expectation," I say.

She understands something at once. "I'm not so grateful for the suite that I will offer to go halvesies on the bed with you," she says.

I ignore this. "My thought was for those who never know their worth," I say.

She is busy straightening her hair, her already pristine black dress. She looks at her watch. "We ought to get going," she says. "What time is your aunt's funeral?"

I look at the elaborate wall clock. "One hour from now."

"Then let's go."

"Yes. Oh, Watson. By the way. Hold my hand as we emerge from the lift. I told my Qatari client that we were newlyweds, hence the need for the swankiest suite."

She sighs. "Oh Sherlock."

"Hold my right hand with your left. It will disguise the fact that you have no wedding band."

She picks up her handbag. "It's wicked to mislead people," she tells me in our own small foyer.

"A minor deception in afar greater scheme," I say as we ride down in the lift.

She grabs my hand and shakes her head. Of course I mean the secret case, but she cannot know that. Her hand is smaller than mine, but firm and steady.

I squeeze her hand as a chime sounds and the doors swish open.

* * *

"Aren't we staying for the reading of the will?" Watson whispers as everyone files out from the chapel into the garden of the house next door.

I huff. My aunt is dead, free at last from that so-called care home, and will not give two hoots whether or not I stay. (She was fond of owls and could mimic them with breathtaking accuracy.) My relatives are universally awful in a wide range of ways. No, we are not staying. But Watson has only the most basic inkling of how bleak my family life might be, so I explain. "No," I say. "My aunt was not blessed with offspring but she was close to her sister - my mother's youngest sister - and we have always understood that the benefit of her extensive portfolio would go to her children, my cousins."

I jerk my head at them: a portly middle aged man in a navy blue pinstripe suit holding an umbrella, and a razor thin younger man in unapologetic black, frowning at his phone.

Watson eyes them. "Do they need the money the way you do?" she asks pointedly.

_The way I do? _I narrow my eyes at her.

"You know what I mean," she says. "What we do... it's good work, but it's not a paying job. Our house belongs to your father. Actually, I thought I would meet him here. Where is he?"

I snort. "The age old scenario, Watson. He said he would be here but oh look, he is not. No one is surprised."

"His sister's funeral," she says slowly.

"Yes. Exactly." Now she is beginning to understand.

"Did he come to - "She hesitates.

"My mother's funeral? No. Well, I don't know for certain. He wouldn't allow me to go either."

Watson is shocked. The luxury of innocence.

I glance around the garden, count the number of waiting staff (fifteen visible) and the number of exit points (three.) There will be much pilfering of the alcohol and probably a bit of the food too, by these hollow-eyed youngsters brought in to feed and water the bereaved.

"Oh, Sherlock –"

"I am used to it," I tell her. She only frowns.

The catering staff hand out champagne. Watson whispers to one of them and an orange juice in a champagne flute appears for me. "It still appears, incongruously, as if we are celebrating," I say. "Typical of my father to plan a funeral the same way he would plan a wedding. Or indeed a christening. Flowers, champagne, impressive venue." I gesture at the high-walled garden of one of his London houses. "It is all one to him and the occasion matters not." I gulp orange juice. It is, of course, excellent, having flown even further than we have to be here.

Watson is looking at my cousins again. "They're going to inherit," she says. "Your aunt's fortune. They just -don't seem to need it. What are they, let me see... The older one...Stockbroker, obviously. Those pinstripes point to a traditional job and the self satisfied manner... Yes."

I am amused. "I will be sure to tell him he has the appearance of a banker," I say. "What about the other one?" I point at my youngest cousin, who is now stalking the buffet tables with the disdain of one who refuses to eat. His vital organs must be groaning under the strain of his ridiculous regime. He tosses his foppish black fringe out of his eyes and looks around with a haughty expression.

Watson is transfixed. "He's quite beautiful," she says dreamily. "Ethereal."

I humph. "He's thin. Deductions, Watson. What is his job?"

She gazes at him. At this moment my odious cousin is glaring around at the mourners with more resentment than even I feel at having to be here when the guest of honour is, so to speak, unable to join in. His right eye twitches as his gaze lands on a waitress by the wine table. He says a word to her, and she darts away, red faced. My cousin smirks.

"He does what you do," Watson says then, and she is so accurate, so absolutely right that I turn and gape at her.

"It's in his eyes," she explains. "He moves faster than you, he makes everything sharper...but it's the same thing. Reading people, puzzling out objects. He's doing it right now. I saw him look at me, trying to work out our relationship. His eyes were all over me. I'd have thought it was sexual if I didn't see you do it every day, to everyone, even me. You're just more subtle about it than he is."

I bark a laugh. "You are correct in all points Watson, and I congratulate you. He is indeed in the same line of work as me. As _us_." I give her a grimace of acknowledgement, and make a gesture which might have been a pat, but for halting before it reaches her shoulder.

She is still watching him, and he, her. She seems disturbingly taken with him. I have observed this phenomenon before and it is not restricted to females. The man is bewilderingly magnetic for someone who goes out of his way to offend. How his partner puts up with it I will never know. At least I appear human. Watson asks, "What's his name?"

Ah, this. I heave a sigh and brace myself. "The same as my own. A family tradition taken to ridiculous extremes."

"Oh my god," says Watson, goggling as expected. "Two of you."

"Don't start," I warn her. She just smiles.

My namesake is approaching with his trademark swagger, one hand in his pocket, (clutching his phone; he cannot part with that thing for a moment), the other extended toward Watson.

"You must be my cousin's partner," he says with a smile he imagines is charming. They shake hands and he peers at her. "Living together...Working together too, I see, spending almost every moment in each other's company. You're not sleeping with him, although he clearly wishes that would change."

Watson gives him a cold smile. "I'm sorry for your loss," she says.

He snorts and continues his dissection. "Ex doctor, no, something requiring even greater dexterity, surgeon obviously but why the move to detective work? Oh," he says in an exaggerated tone of dawning comprehension, "of course."

"Bluffing," I say to the sky.

He is instantly on the attack. "Am I though? The shoes give it away. They are five hundred dollar shoes, brand new but never worn. The clothes otherwise are minimal, so understated as to invite invisibility - hallmark of someone who has experienced personal or professional disgrace. The shoes have been kept but not worn, a reminder of life as it used to be. And the crime," he goes on, blind to Watson's discomfort, "was to kill a patient, under the knife I'm guessing, or was it - yes, the knife, but the cause - oh that _is_ interesting."

His partner is close by, an older man who has a weary air.

"John," I say. "Please restrain him."

"Sorry about your aunt," John says to me, smiling mildly at Watson. I shrug.

Watson says to my cousin as he is gently drawn away to where rows of chairs have been set out, "I turned to detective work because it is something else I am good at and I enjoy. That's all."

"Lying!" he calls in a sing song voice. John elbows him and manhandles him to a seat far away.

"I know you're infuriating at least half the time, but on balance I definitely prefer you," Watson tells me in a low voice as we edge onto the plastic chairs ready for the will reading. Courtesy and curiosity have prevailed. Also Watson, playing the 'we've come all this way' card.

I give her a quick grin. "That's one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me," I tell her.

She smiles her knowing smile and we sit in companionable silence as we wait for the will to be read.

* * *

A split. I find myself locking eyes with my cousin, for once in harmony with him, in this case, a synchronicity of surprise as we learn that our aunt's legacy is to be divided equally between us, including money, property and her few personal possessions.

The old girl was as sharp as ever, then. Spotted the two people most in need of cash and dished some out.

Some.

A considerable amount of money.

Joan stares at me.

I watch my cousin. He is muttering something to his partner, whose eyebrows reside in his hairline these days, as well they might, their owner living with such an annoying prat. But now, an annoying and somewhat rich prat.

As I now also am.

I realise that everyone is looking at my cousin and me. Their shocked faces fade away... I realise that now I can afford to keep Watson. In wages. We will not need to stoop to paid cases unless we so choose. And she need not cling onto her damaging guilt about taking payment from me. I can easily afford it. She will be pleased.

"You look astounded," my cousin says, approaching.

"You look as smug as you usually do," I return.

"I predicted this," he says.

I resist the urge to say, _Bollocks you did _and say instead, "Congratulations," very graciously, and am rewarded with his look of astonishment.

I take his surprise as an opportunity to take Watson's arm and move away.

I am now it seems, an independent man. And that gives me many options.

Watson's phone buzzes. She picks it up and gazes at it. "That's weird."

"Is it? Good, let's leave." I escort her out onto the street and away from my relations.

"This message. It's code...it's like the one Moriarty used."

She shows me. A chill runs from my scalp to my stomach.

Here is the second reason for our presence in London, and the other proof of the importance of having Watson at my side.

Irene has escaped and she is here.

* * *

**Author's note**: This chapter ran away with me this evening and I could not see a natural place to split it up, so here it is in its hastily written entirety. I hope you like it, and will forgive the self indulgent not-quite crossover section at the funeral... There is mileage in this one, perhaps. Also, this story is kind of crossing over with The Woman and another Elementary one in the pipeline which has a working title of The Palace. It was unintentional but now seems inevitable. And hey, I'm having fun. I hope you like it all, anyway. -Sef


	5. Frail container

"Moriarty knows we cracked her code," I say as I hail a cab. "She won't use the same key again."

"It might not be her," Watson says. We hang onto the handles as the taxi swings round corner after corner, heading back to the heart of the city.

I hesitate. I have not been in the habit of withholding information from Watson. Well, not for a long while. But I have not told her the whole truth about this trip. How to confess?

I had wondered if she would question my sudden willingness to get on a plane, even for my aunt's funeral. But she did not – just sat beside me with her hand reassuringly on my arm for five hours until the wheels touched tarmac and I could worry about disasters closer to the ground.

My psychic powers never materialised, to the disappointment of my eight year old self, and so I must use words. "It _is_ her," I say, and Watson's head snaps round.

I explain. "I heard a rumour that she had escaped her low security prison. She is awaiting trial. They stupidly placed her among fraudsters and thieves." She should have been next to Hannibal Lecter.

"What! When?"

I shuffle my feet against the speckled yellow linoleum ridges of the cab floor. "Last week," I admit.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"It did not seem relevant. And then I got news about my aunt."

She stews for a moment, arms folded, face crumpled. Then she says, "What do you mean, a rumour?"

Trust Watson to go directly to the most interesting part. I drum my fingers on the hand holds. "The prison would neither confirm nor deny her escape. I tried to call her to prove that she was there, but they told me she was in the medical ward and was not to be disturbed."

"Why would the prison lie about her being there?"

"I think they think she is there," I say. "But they are suspicious. And rightly so. Irene - Moriarty has sprung herself from this joke of a facility and I presume left someone in the medical ward in her place. Easy enough to achieve, with staff that don't know you."

"How?" Watsons demands.

"Imagine a facial rash or swelling that renders you unrecognizable to your friends. You are admitted to the hospital. You switch with another person of around the same height and build, to whom you have also administered the drug which causes the face swelling. You take the antidote or perhaps during your sojourn your face has healed under the bandages you cannot bear to take off.. In any case, you swap places with your accomplice and away you go."

"So, what, she just had a body double handy?"

"That, I imagine, is one of the benefits of running a sprawling criminal network. A ready supply of minions in all shapes and sizes."

"So where is she now?"

"London," I say.

Watson takes deep breaths. I observe as she absorbs the information. "We're not really here for your aunt's funeral, are we," she says flatly.

"Yes," I say. "We are. But as we are here –"

She belts me with her handbag. "Sherlock! Tell the police! If she's free she could be dangerous." A thought seems to strike her. "Does she know you're here?"

I grimace. "The death of my aunt can hardly have escaped her notice. I almost expected her to appear at the funeral. But," I add, over Watson's outraged exclamations, "I was only certain of anything when you got that text."

She clamps her mouth shut and folds her arms.

My mind races. Irene has money and an inclination for the finest things is life. It is not coincidence that I got us rooms at the Shangri-La. It is where I predicted she would be. As yet I have no proof of this. It will need to be verified. Just because I have a connection with London's newest hotel does not mean she does not. In fact, given the enormous sums of cash required to secure a room in this place, it seems inevitable.

I need a little time, to work through the list of guests and staff at this hotel. And I need to shake up my old London network, see if I can get some help with this one. Moriarty told me she would never kill me, but six months behind bars might have changed her mind.

I would prefer privacy for these tasks, especially the second. My network included addicts and dealers and Watson would not approve. And if she is present, if they get even a sniff of her, my people will detect sobriety and flee.

The cab flies over London Bridge, and the Shard fills the sky. It is now late afternoon and the light is dropping. "We're jetlagged," I say. "We should rest. Moriarty will still be there in the morning. We'll just lock our door and return to this conundrum tomorrow. I will think on it tonight," I add for effect.

Watson is scowling out of the window. It occurs to me that I do not know if she has ever been to London before. I have assumed she has. With her surgeon's pay she would have been able to afford to travel. But who with? Her life before we met is mostly unknown to me. She necessarily knows more of my history. How strange, that there is this blank in my knowledge. I store it away for later correction.

She is still turned away from me. I make my voice warm and intimate. "Room service," I suggest. "You take a shower, do whatever it is women do n the bathroom for hours on end, and I will fire up the computer and see what I can turn up about Moriarty."

Watson climbs from the cab outside our hotel, pays the driver with calm courtesy, and waits while he pulls away. Then she replies. She is fierce. "You are so full of it. Since when do we rest when there's a case? I should take a shower? Right. You're just going to ditch me the minute the bathroom door swings shut."

She knows me rather well.

"Let's cut the crap and decide what to do," she says as we cross the scrubbed pavement at the foot of the towering glass spike which is our hotel.

"All right," I say humbly. "I'm – sorry. I should have known you would see through me. I do want a shower myself though."

The bathroom is a windowless cell with just one door, onto the bedroom.

"All right," she says. "Room service is still a good idea," she concedes.

"You know I will find her," I say. "And stop her, whatever her current _scheme_." The word makes my lip curl. It is the thought of Irene, somewhere in this tower right now, free and planning and – triumphing. It is not a personal victory I seek. I seek justice, and at this moment she is laughing at justice.

"Yes. I know. But – Sherlock. Listen to me."

We are in the marble and gold foyer of the building. Watson stops and places her hand on my arm, as if once again I am about to enter a world where a stranger controls my destiny and uncontrollable forces act upon the frail container in which I exist.

"Sherlock," Watson says. "That woman deliberately – knowingly - wrecked your life. I couldn't bear it if you got hurt again. So whatever we do, we do together. Right? No sloping off." She grips my arm. A world of fear, for me, is communicated through her slender fingers and I am touched, in the emotional sense as well as the physical.

Also, I am soundly beaten. "Yes ma'am."

"Don't patronise me. I'm meant to be your bride not your grandmother."

She could give my grandmother a run for her money any day. "Yes," I say again, as the safest of all possible responses.

"OK."

She releases my arm, then clutches it again. "Thank you," she says, and does something unprecedented. She leans in to kiss my cheek. I dodge this unwarranted intimacy and the kiss lands on the opposite side from its intended location, close to my mouth. For a second Watson and I are closer than we have ever been, and I can feel her warmth and smell her light and fresh shower gel.

It is awkward. "Yes, well," I say.

"Newlyweds," she says casually, and her eyes indicate the concierge, watching us expectantly. I realise that things could have been much worse.

"Indeed," I respond with all the nonchalance in my power, and slide my arm carefully around Watson. There is nothing of her, and I have never before experienced that so immediately: how small and slim she is. Her personality projects strength over her physique, smothering size completely. She allows the contact, and we proceed across the marble floor to the lifts.

Watson is smiling. A big, fake smile that I never see. I rarely see her smile in any event, but this is another beast entirely. I get the impression this is her public relations smile, to be used on all occasions where an appearance of normality and contentment is required – an appearance which, naturally, she cannot otherwise give.

Interesting.

Inside the lifts, she says, "You can let go now."

I shake my head and nod at the ceiling. "They've got cameras." I squeeze her closer in a pastiche of husbandly affection.

She scrunches her face in a hideous pout which the extremely simple might take for a loving smile. "Do they have audio?"

"No."

"Then take your hand off my ass."

"Realism, Watson," I say, but move my hand. She has only just forgiven me for trying to escape, and I was only joking anyway. I hang onto her though, my arm around her midsection.

"We have just had a fight," she announces, wrenching free. "And you will be sleeping on the couch tonight."

"Ad libbing, Watson; I applaud you." I lean back against the rail and watch our many reflections in the mirrored walls as we shoot towards the fifty fourth floor.

She rolls her eyes. "Maybe I will take that shower."

I grin. Success. "Perfect."

There are four ways to escape from that bathroom without Watson noticing, and I only need one of them. Irene will be in my sights before the end of the evening.


	6. Fine sand

I stare at Watson's supposedly sleeping form. She is angry with me (again) and not just for sneaking out when I was meant to be in the shower. I am now back, it is two a.m., the lounge area of the suite is lit by dim yellow table lamps and the bedroom, where Watson is wrapped in a tense knot of sheets, is in darkness.

I stand at the bedroom door and moisten my lips. How furious is she? Forgiveness must arrive quickly; we are short of time. How will she receive my plan? Not well, I suspect. But nonetheless I must prepare her for it. "Watson," I whisper. "Do you trust me?"

"Based on current performance? Not especially." The reply is brief and taut, but her turned shoulder speaks volumes.

"Irene is here," I say. "In this hotel. Staying on the floor below this." I switch on the bedroom lights and step fully into the room.

Watson sits up, wrenching back the covers. She is crunching her eyes up against the sudden brightness, and against me, appearing in her designated space. "So now what? Are you going to call round, ask her to please crack the code on the message she sent?" She rubs at her eyes, pinches the bridge of her nose.

"No need," I say. I come and hover near the bed. Watson drags the covers up around her waist and eyes me with suspicion. "I have already cracked it. The encryption key was the room number in which Irene - Moriarty - is staying."

This is a verbal flaw I have noticed in myself. I never forget to call Watson, Watson. Yet Moriarty remains Irene in my head. A weakness, the well-travelled neural pathways providing a tempting shortcut between brain and mouth. In a hundred ways this woman can never be Irene to me again - and yet when I speak of her, there Irene is.

"So what does it say?" Watson, in T-shirt and no make-up, reaches for a hair tie and begins scraping her hair up off her face.

I relax. The interest of the case has dissipated her anger and she cares once again that her hair is (was) untidy. Waiting for this event, I was, I realise, shifting from toe to toe. I force myself to stand still. "The message reads, _Now I can begin."_

"Huh." She folds her arms.

I study her. I have already grasped Moriarty's crude plan. I have a number of options for thwarting it, none of them enjoyable but all better than allowing her to get what she wants.

"So, I guess you're going to call the police, have them bring her in and lock her back up and then we can continue with our trip to London?" Extreme sarcasm. Even without her withering tone, Watson's tilted head and narrowed eyes would tell me that this is the last thing she expects me to do.

"Of course not," I say, ignoring the jibe. "We're going to text her back and ask where she would like to start."

I take Watson's phone off the bedside table. Watson drops back onto her pillows with a sigh of despair.

As she mutters her frustrations at the ceiling, I scroll to Messages on her phone. She has a new text waiting. Not from Moriarty.

It is a UK mobile number. _Agreed: you provide a welcome distraction. Meet me at Old Street station, eight am. SH_

Who still uses full sentence in texts? Who uses _colons_?

All preceding messages in the conversation have been deleted - covert Watson! - and I move quickly to sending my own text to Moriarty, whilst many emotions rise and fall within me like fine sand being poured into a jug of water.

Joan has set up a meeting with my cousin. Secretly. And the tone of his message is - for him - positively warm and inviting. Flirtatious. A welcome distraction - ? Is this a – liaison?

My magnetic cousin. Not for him the indignity of rehab or self-enforced emigration to a land far from disgrace and loss. His drug use is recreational and his fall was literal, although the exact circumstances of this remain opaque to me. (Awkward thing to ask a man, why he leapt from a building. I did not go to his funeral but still, it must have been, it was, traumatic for his friends and relations. And yet they have forgiven him, despite this bizarre act having repercussions to this day.) And now he has recovered and is inviting my partner for an illicit meeting at a Tube station?

Well, she thought he was good-looking, and presumably even he is capable of appreciating the female aesthetic. But a date? I shut down the mental image of Joan and my cousin entwined. The vision of these two slender and beautiful people works far too well to be comfortable. Luckily I have my own welcome distraction in the form of this case.

This may be to do with the legacy, I realise. Watson may be researching the other recipient. Does she suspect the timing of my aunt's demise and Irene's emergence, even as I do?

"By the way, I'm going out early tomorrow morning," Watson says airily. "I promised my brother I'd get him some cheesy postcards from London."

"Remember Moriarty is on the prowl," I say. "She will be watching us." Though by tomorrow I plan to have given her other things to think about.

Watson shakes her head. "She'll be watching _you_. Sending a message via me was just a way of yanking your chain."

Was it? Am I allowing ego to blur my chain of logic? No. As much as I came here for Irene, I am certain that Irene also came here for me. "Be careful, Watson," I warn her. "Your safety is important to me." A thought strikes. "Perhaps I should accompany you tomorrow on your quest for souvenirs?"

"You'd be bored. Don't worry; it will only take half an hour. We need to work on this Moriarty thing."

Half an hour. Probably not a date, then. Taking travel time into the equation, even I would struggle to work that fast. So why did Watson mislead me about her early morning outing?

Watson's phone beeps. _Anytime_, is the message. Irene has not even bothered to encrypt it.

I retreat, towards the sofa. At the bedroom door I pause, my hand on the brass light switch, and repeat my earlier question. "Do you trust me, Watson?"

She sighs, looks me in the eye. I am fifteen feet away, too far for any repeat of her sentimental reassurances. But her look is quite legible. "Yes. I trust you."

"No matter what?" I insist.

"Yes." She is looking predictably concerned.

"Then trust me," I tell her. "However things look, trust me." I switch off the bedroom light and quickly cross the lounge area, heading for the door.

As I escape into the hotel corridor I hear Watson's feet hit the carpet and pound across the room.

"Sherlock!" Watson calls as the door to our suite bangs shut.

I ignore the yell. Moriarty wants to begin, and I see no reason to wait.

I know where she is: downstairs. I know what she wants: me.

Watson is safe here, and if she is in contact with my cousin, then she has resources available in London. There is no need to delay on her account.

No doubt Moriarty would like to engage in some tedious cat and mouse game in which I resist, dodging the hoops she would have me jump through, until at last circumstances press us together.

I am not inclined to indulge her. The less time I spend in her company, the better it will be for my mental equilibrium. And I have better things to do. As my obnoxious young cousin might phrase it, I cannot be arsed.

I press the lift call button, descend one floor, find Moriarty's suite, and pause. Some vestigial male vanity makes me check my reflection in the gleaming door plate.

I look as I always do. I have not made a special effort. Neither have I been particularly careless of my appearance. I am unremarkable. Good. My ego is not fed by externalities. Hers is, though. I need to look like myself, and I do. So.

I raise my fist and rap my knuckles sharply on Moriarty's hotel room door.


	7. Crystal

I knock on Irene's door but there is no answer. Dialling Reception, I put a call through to the room and there is no reply. Has Ms Moriarty checked out? No sir. Has she gone out for the evening? I couldn't say sir.

Of course you can't. Thank you and good night.

I take the stairs back up to the honeymoon suite. So, Irene does not want me right now. She is trying to preserve her chances of a thrilling game in which I dance as she plays. Well, good. I have her on the back foot. I will find her and offer myself again tomorrow.

I enter our suite. All the lights are on. Watson is fastening her boots. She jolts as I appear in front of her and we lock eyes.

"Moriarty threw you back, huh?"

"She seems to be out seeking different fish tonight."

We stare at each other.

Watson cracks first. "Why did you ask me to trust you, Sherlock? What are you planning that requires a special reminder of trust?" Other than confronting Moriarty in her hotel room, that is.

"We are partners, Watson. Trust is implicit. This does not mean we need share every detail of our activities. I am preparing certain outcomes. No doubt you are also considering the implications of our interesting Moriarty situation. I assume you will share anything relevant at the appropriate moment, as I will with you."

She emits a noise of frustration. Her wrists fly outwards, her jaw clamps shut. Her fingers flex and clench. After this burst of energy, however, she stills, and stands in front of me, shoulders drooping.

She seems tired. Unsurprising: flying the wrong way against the time zones and being woken by me in the small hours.

"Sleep," I tell her, gesturing at the magnificent bedroom. I cast myself down on the striped blue and yellow satin sofa. It is enormous. Its mouldings would not disgrace Blenheim.

Watson clomps into the bedroom – the thick cream carpet deadening the sound and reducing its satisfaction as a means of expressing displeasure - and I lie back and wonder if Irene is at this moment lying on an identical sofa, twenty feet beneath me, ignoring my phone calls and knocks at the door. She was not ready for me. That is a good sign. Tomorrow I will select a location and invite her there to collect me.

Watson dumps a soft white mountain on me. I thrash, dignity lost, and surface from beneath the duvet. She gives me a cold glare. "I would ask you not to disappear again but clearly that would be pointless."

I say nothing, but allow my gaze to run over her face, absorbing detail. It is a habit, but in this case it is deliberate. I am making a point. I am being me and she knows she cannot argue with that. She stalks back to the bedroom, smacking the brass master switch on the wall as she passes. The suite goes black.

"Sweet dreams," I call, but softly.

Her boots hit the floor on a one-two beat. The bed creaks as she climbs in.

I relax each muscle group in turn and think, and listen.

Silence. Not silence: the noise of late night in a hotel room. Hum of the aircon, buzz from the fridge. In the corridor, a light ticks. If we were a hundred feet nearer the ground I might hear traffic, the endless London rustle which backgrounds every conversation, every phone call. But up here we are separated from reality. In this glass pyramid sound clues are muffled and the visual is everything.

I cannot tell Watson my fears, my doubts about my plan. I cannot let her see my terror of weakening when I face Irene. I cannot allow her to think that her mentor is anything less than she imagines, because in these moments she takes strength and daring from my display of both. She is not a natural risk taker, but she can move quickly when she is confident of success. I will need that speed, and all her dexterity, but she must believe in what we do.

She must believe in me, even though I am a great big liar.

I lie still and listen. If I concentrate, I can hear her breathing. Her slight movements under her own duvet. Her restless distress with my behaviour.

The duvet whips and flumps. She cannot settle.

I slip my feet from my shoes. Where is Irene? I run through the locations mentioned earlier this evening by my contacts. She would want somewhere secure, yet dramatic. Something to intimidate the victim, tempt the one she means to make pay. Me. I need only ask myself: what would I find tempting?

Nonsense. The question should properly be: what would Moriarty imagine me to find tempting?

The answer comes at once, has been obvious from the moment we saw the encrypted message. No doubt of it: Joan. Joan will be the bait, and will double as the supposed reward for correct behaviour.

Moriarty is right. To keep Watson safe I would do a lot. But Watson does not mean to me what Moriarty imagines. In this respect Moriarty's mind is not subtle enough. Despite her scorn for gender prejudice she cannot escape her own: she believes Watson is my lover, or worse, my convenience. She has no grasp of the depth of our friendship, the extent of our understanding. Watson is to me steadfastness, clarity, simplicity. She holds my mind to a line when I find myself veering in all directions. My deductions chime a true note when struck against the crystal of her questioning mind.

Perhaps one day we will be lovers. I would not object to the idea, were she not Watson. But she is Watson. The act of love is less vital than the many acts of friendship which we engage in (mainly, which she engages in) every day.

I take slow breaths and deliberately notice the texture of striped satin under my back. Sleep. It is time.

Watson has never given a sign that she wishes to become my lover. I trust I have given her no false encouragement to that delusion. If such a thing should ever be suggested, I would explain how vital our partnership has become. Perhaps I would take her hand in a rare contact and gaze unblinking at her as I told her that our friendship is more important than any fleeting physical pleasure. Yes.

All of that is correct. Accurate. However I dwell on the possibility, my mind worrying at it like a tiny imperfection on a leather steering wheel, discovered again and again over the course of a thousand mile journey. I have wondered, and now I cannot leave it alone.

It is difficult to express. The act with Watson is unthinkable. I could never demean her. And yet the thing I imagine is not the thing I am capable of. I imagine meaning, not degradation. But meaning is dangerous territory. I have made no foolish promises to myself, sworn never to love again or anything so melodramatic. Yet I shy from the idea of Watson as a replacement for Irene. Watson is Watson.

Tomorrow I will confide in her so that she grasps the plan and can play her part. I will brief her before she goes out on her supposed postcard errand.

I close my eyes and sleep for four and a half hours.

* * *

I arrive at Old Street Tube, irritated with myself for having missed Watson before she left for this liaison, and position myself in the everything shop on the concourse, behind a rotary display of postcards. I flick through supposedly typical London scenes (red telephone boxes, the Queen in a crown, cheery bobbies and other things not seen since decimalisation) and survey the station.

A peculiar station, Old Street. Its circular shape and shallow flight of steps give it a Broadway air as if commuters are descending onto a spotlit stage. The permanent hubbub might mask close harmonies, the mass of dark coats and suits might be hiding high-kicks in sync with an unseen orchestra...

I snort at my flight of fancy. Watson is waiting near the ticket office, by the 'too wide' ticket barrier. At first I think she too is alone but then I glimpse a black coat, black wavy hair, a blue scarf wound around a white neck – a skinny form lurking behind a pillar on the train side of the ticket barrier. My cousin is here, and he is in covert conversation with my partner.

I sneak closer and observe from behind a board covered in handwritten announcements of delays. _Person under a train._ A chillingly bald London classic.

Watson is leaning over the barrier, unperturbed by the people pressing at her from the side as they manoeuvre luggage, pushchairs or just themselves through the wide glass barrier. She is from New York. She regards London crowds as a somewhat amateur effort.

My cousin stands, now, close by, looking down at her. The height is all on his side of the family. We got the looks. Watson has to tilt her chin up to talk to him, which she does not need to do with me – she and I are at eye level when she wears high heels, which is always.

My cousin wears his habitual public expression: arrogant disdain for all around him. A mistake, to broadcast perceived superiority. People do not reveal themselves willingly to a person who is looking down his nose. I prefer to hide my greater intelligence under a bushel of casual clothes and diffident manner – far more conducive to setting people at their ease. He probably just bullies witness into giving up their observations – he would see that as an efficiency. Prat. Though I admit he does sometimes get a result.

He is speaking now to Watson. I cannot hear his Eton tones but between the bodies of hurrying travellers I lip-read the final part: "One bee."

Watson nods, then extends her hand to bid him farewell. He gives a tiny shrug and then leans across swiftly and plants a fleeting kiss on her cheek, gaining a shy smile in return.

Oh really? Charm, from the King of Affront? Watson does command that level of acknowledgement, however. It is just that in our professional relationship, I have determined not to pay it to her.

My cousin looks at his watch, then scans the concourse. I duck behind my sign. When I look back, Watson is hand in hand with him, hurrying through the barrier.

I curse and dive after them but have no ticket, no Oyster card. As I am halted at the barrier I crane to see through the throng, and see my cousin's coat tails whirling around a corner towards the escalators.

I frown and purchase a ticket. I could have leapt the barrier and chased after them, but that would ultimately result in a fight with the London Transport Police and I have not the time. In any case, I know where they are going.

Baker Street.


	8. Unexpected unison

I take a taxi to Baker Street and consider the future. Moriarty will be armed with a gun and, no doubt, some thugs glorified with the name of lieutenant but as dispensable as traditional henchmen. The original thuggees of nineteenth century India - perfectors of the ritual assassination - would no doubt be aghast at the low and unsubtle connotations their name has acquired over the intervening hundred and some years... The kind of thug employed by the likes of Moriarty will be biddable and dangerous.

I will be armed with Watson. Moriarty knows, now, her own Achilles heel, and will be wary. She may be aggressive, seeking to remove Watson quickly, but I will wrap Watson in Kevlar - literally, this is not the time for mere metaphorical protection - and instruct her to use the evasive moves she has been practising at the brownstone, should violence break out.

I anticipate, however, that Watson will have sufficient time to administer the knockouts I have procured for the purpose of disabling Moriarty and her accomplices. Whichever of us gets close first, will strike. The effect is instantaneous - I had to call in a few favours and employ some uncomfortable flattery to obtain the drug - and the victim will drop, at which point the other of us will jab the remaining sidekicks.

Not a brilliant plan, not a flawless plan, but it is the plan I have. I still find it difficult to think about Irene. I am aware of the weakness she represents. But this will disable her, immediately, and allow the Met to arrive and continue the work in their own sweet time.

I have the ampoules and microneedles. Watson will know better than I the most effective technique. I must ennerve her for this unpleasant encounter and persuade her that any behaviour she witnesses in my attempt to gain proximity to Moriarty is a ruse and nothing more. She may be nervous - I certainly will be, although naturally I will shield her from this knowledge - and she may have concerns about my ability to treat Moriarty with the dispassionate coolness the situation merits. I will reassure Watson on these points so that all can proceed smoothly.

But first I have to catch up with her, halt this cosy chat with my cousin and impress upon her the need to apprehend Moriarty before she launches her plan.

I believe I know what that plan is, and why she needs me, but in any case, I need to get a move on and hurry across town to Baker Street.

* * *

The flat is empty. Worth a quick look, though. Curiosity is a virtue.

I Iet myself in with an old technique and proceed up the bare wood stairs. An armchair rests at the foot, as if my cousin's landlady sits listening outside her flat, for noises from his.

The place has a pleasant, homey feel to it: the building houses several flats but there seems little barrier between them. My cousin's flat has its own front door at the top of two flights, and it is not locked. There is another flight of stairs leading upwards from this landing and I investigate there first. It leads to a miniflat, mostly bedroom: a plain room, with a single suitcase in the wardrobe and its contents neatly hung or folded in the ancient oak chest of drawers. Several highly practical coats droop on the back of the door, and effective-looking boots are lined up under the bed. John's room.

The bed is unslept in. Not just remade after use - actually grown dusty since it was turned down so neatly.

I smile, picturing them like Watson and me, flaked out in their chairs downstairs, asleep, with papers from the case flopped on their chests. My own bed is a lonely beast, used mainly when I have female company: now that Watson lives with me, most locations in the brownstone are out of bounds for extra curricular light relief. Most of my sleep takes place elsewhere.

The living room is a Victorian medley of heavy old furniture and fixtures, with twenty-first century appliances dotted throughout. I approve. It is convivial. Although their housekeeper could do with visiting more often. Miss Hudson's OCD keeps my own living space continually pristine.

My cousin was a biochemist at university and I can see that the urge to tinker with flesh has not abated as he passed his thirty-fifth birthday. The fridge has preserving jars crammed with eyeballs and thumbs, plus one former takeaway tray bulging with something I cannot identify.

I am still trying, when I become aware of a presence in the room. I whirl round and see John standing with his feet apart and an expression of mild interest: the appearance of someone who will be nice right up until he has to kill you.

"He said you'd turn up," John says. He folds his arms.

"I was looking for him," I say. This is partially true.

He gives an upwards nod. "Not here. Cup of tea?"

"By all means."

We circle each other in the tiled kitchen as the kettle boils, John eyeing me with a keen interest which I might have misinterpreted but for the unspoken fact of my absent cousin looming between us.

"You're like him," John says at last, squeezing teabags into a saucer.

I grunt.

"You see everything," John clarifies.

"Not everything," I say. "But it is not necessary to see everything in order to make useful deductions."

"So tell me where he is right now."

I look around. "Sitting in a cafe less than half a mile away, earnestly explaining something my partner has worked out already."

John smiles. "Because?"

"His coat is on the hatstand. He is constitutionally incapable of venturing more than a block from home without his dramatic black greatcoat." I accept the cup of tea from him, the classic British peace offering.

"Ok..."

"That he is meeting my partner is obvious from earlier behaviour of hers which I observed: she is a poor liar and the number on her phone belonged to a mobile I have since confirmed as belonging to my cousin."

John considers this. "Fair enough. What are they talking about, then? I imagine it's something that would curdle milk or I would have been included."

I scowl. "Only the probable capture and torture, likely murder, of my partner."

John nods. "So why aren't you there with her?"

"She clearly thinks me incapable of managing the situation alone. Her absence ironically provides me, if I chose, with the very opportunity I would need to prove her wrong."

"Sherlock -"

I sense that many of John's sentences begin with this weary patience.

"We should all join forces," he says. He watches me, dark-eyed over the run of his mug. "No sneaking around. I should think we can help you. But we'll do better if we share information."

"I had already reached that conclusion while on the way over here. Let's go and find them." I drain my mug of tea.

"So," John says as we drop our empty mugs into the sink. "What's the name of our enemy this time?"

"Moriarty," I say, and am startled to see his face drain of colour, leaving him pale, and grey, and old.

* * *

The cafe is next door to the flat. Presumably my cousin preferred not to showcase his domestic skills for this meeting, treating Watson instead to one of London's greasiest spoons.

John enters first and nods at everyone in the place.

My cousin is alone at a table near the back, flicking through his phone and looking contemplative. Watson can have that effect on you. He looks up and locks eyes with John. Instant comprehension of the situation. He gestures at two seats at his table.

To be fair, it would save time if all conversations went like this. He and John know each other so well that each is transparent to the other. Incremental deductions are possible, each building on the last until a beautiful tower of logic and knowledge presents the entire person.

"Moriarty," says my cousin directly. I nod. "A female."

"Yes," I say. And realize that something is wrong. They are both gazing at me so intently. "You know the name," I say.

"Jim Moriarty was an opponent who nearly beat me," says my cousin. "He forced my hand, forced me to a very difficult decision."

John is looking daggers at the table.

"So that was what let to the fall," I say. "A game with him." Irene talked of games.

"It was not a game!" My cousin snaps, and John lays a warning hand on his arm.

"So," I say, "the Moriarty of which I speak is a woman, known to me from years ago, and who was bested most recently by Watson. Where is my partner, by the way?"

"Toilet," says my cousin.

I jump up.

He blinks at me and then says, "My God."

We run to the tiny lavatory at the back of the shop. Its door has been forced, and the smell of Guerlain is overpowering.

"A struggle," pronounces my cousin. "She was dragged here, through the kitchen, and here." He points at scrape marks on the scuffed lino.

"She sprayed her captors with her perfume as she was being dragged away," I say. "Self defence, or leaving a trail?"

"What, are you a dog?" snaps my cousin. He is darting about in the back hall of the cafe. I stand still and think.

I have to find Joan. Where would Moriarty take her?

And why did my mention of that name cause John so much distress? What did this other Moriarty really do?

"Why," I say slowly, addressing my cousin who is by now also motionless, lost in thought, "are there two Moriartys?"

We frown. And then exclaim in unexpected unison, "There aren't."


	9. Glacier

I am in the narrow lane which runs behind Baker Street. The tall yellowbrick houses have tiny back courtyards, some functioning as a parking space, some as gardens, most as a space to store the bins. The lane itself is still part cobbled. On its other side are mews belonging to the houses in the next street. At one time horses clopped home into their town quarters, and carriages jostled for turning room at the start and end of their day. It is remarkable how much of London survived the Blitz, how much is still the Victorian or Georgian city our ancestors would recognise.

I notice these details while my heart pounds and my hands become clammy and cold. Adrenaline ought to provide a useful boost to my thought capacity but instead it is crystallising a single thought which blocks all paths like a glacier carving a route across mountains: _Watson_.

Irene has her. Irene will use her to get to me. I will comply immediately and completely with any demand in order to free Watson. Watson will resist this line of action. Irene will hurt her. I will still have to do whatever Irene wishes but in addition Watson will have been harmed and I will not have prevented it as I promised myself I would.

I made a promise to Watson too, although she would not accept it. Quite the reverse. I warned her that safety was rarely a feature in our line of work. She claimed that try as I would to protect her I could not guarantee it. She accepted this. Yet now that the almost inevitable has occurred and she is in danger, I am frozen with guilt and fear, and my usual clarity has deserted me.

I close my eyes and count prime numbers until my heart rate reduces a little. I must set aside blame and concern and simply work. My judgement remains my own. Using it I will locate Watson and free her.

There is no security camera covering the back of the cafe. I crouch and set my face close to the ground, and am rewarded with the sight of very faint damp tyre tracks plus a waft of Mitsouko.

My cousin emerges, scowling, from the cafe kitchen.

"One of the attackers trod in the broken perfume bottle," I tell him. "Some kind of spongy shoe sole, soaked up the moisture and the van reversed over the damp patch on its way out." I point at the tread marks.

"There were two men," he confirms. "The staff saw one man grab Joan, and another at the wheel of a white van parked here."

"Ford Transit," I say, straightening up. Useless. The most popular single type of van sold in the UK. "Why didn't the staff try to stop the kidnap? Was the first man armed?"

My cousin shakes his head. "Different sort of fear. He told them he was from Immigration. Half the people in there are Poles and Latvians on dodgy student visas. No one moved a muscle as he dragged her past."

I grunt. "Clever. Was she injured at that point?" This is important for her chances of escape. I need to know this detail. But the answer must be a fact, and not, as I fear it will be, a stab to what passes for my heart.

"No."

"Right," I say. Stab averted. For the moment.

John has called the police and now comes out of the cafe, putting his phone back inside his jacket. "It'll be an hour or so before someone can be here."

"For God's sake," complains my cousin. "Did you say it was me?"

"It wasn't you," John says mildly. "It was me."

"You know what I mean."

"Probable routes," I say, cutting across the bickering. "And likely destinations." I had a selection in mind based on last night's contact with my old network, but they need confirmation.

"I have already posited a few, based on what Joan and I discussed earlier," says my cousin, peeling his gaze slowly from John's face. He runs off a list of locations. Using logic and my recent information, I dismiss all but one.

"A power station? Where?" The two I can think of have both been converted to art galleries.

"Wapping. Abandoned. In the heart of a newly gentrified area, but that area is almost completely contained by the old Docklands crime empire." He curls his lip. "This one had a brief spell as a restaurant but is currently between owners."

"A power station would appeal to Moriarty's sense of the dramatic," I say. I check the most direct route to Wapping on my phone. It is much too far to walk, and yet if we get a Tube or cab, we will miss clues.

We cannot delay. Watson does not have my resources. She is strong but Irene is callous. I cannot calculate the outcome of such a standoff without imagining the worst.

I frown in frustration and head in the most probable direction, keeping my eyes to the ground.

There is a pause as I concentrate. The roads are busy, of course, and the pavements and roads are too well trodden to read. There is not even any litter in London these days.

I hear a cough and look up. I have travelled fifty yards and am on Wigmore Street, despairing of the near infinite routes a vehicle could take for the six mile journey to the old docks area. My cousin and John are standing beside me.

"We're coming with you, obviously," my cousin says. John nods.

I look at them. It makes sense of course. I return to my fruitless scanning of the ground while they watch traffic.

"Listen," says my cousin. "I need to make a small investment. John, have you got any money?"

John rolls his eyes and hands over a note. My cousin darts to the doorway of a shop not yet open, where a man is wrapped in a dirty blanket. He accepts the money and listens to my cousin's instructions.

"Ok, back to the flat," commands my cousin. "We'll get confirmation of the power station within half an hour."

I hesitate, but this is his home ground now. And if Watson is incapacitated, I need to arm my new allies with the knockout ampoules and needles.

* * *

"What did you mean, there aren't two Moriartys?" John asks while my cousin makes rapid Google searches and texts his contacts at Scotland Yard, and I examine what is known of this ex power station and hope that no one at the Yard who knew me, turns up to assist.

"Exactly that," I say. The former power station is on what is now a residential street. Bizarre. Yet good, because gunfire will be noticed. I cannot rejoice, however, because there are so many ways of killing a person silently.

John waits.

"Moriarty is not a person," I say. "It is an idea. The idea of the master criminal. Defined by the ability to commit a crime which confounds everyone."

"Or the ability to defeat the detective who confounds everyone," says my cousin.

"Yes," I say. "I imagine we each represent one of the badges of merit needed to become Moriarty."

"Jim Moriarty defeated me. Temporarily," my cousin muses. "He must have thought that killing himself ensured his move could not be beaten, especially as the deal also supposedly resulted in my own demise."

"My own Moriarty likewise brought me low," I admit. "She rendered me effectively useless for a long time. But when I met Watson, I recovered. I came back. And so did Moriarty."

"Her position was under threat," agrees my cousin. "She needed to restate her dominance."

"Ok," John says. "So who decides? Is there an _X Factor_ of criminals? Who gets to be Simon Cowell?"

I snort. My cousin blinks. Honestly, how does he survive in the knowledge-driven world of detection when he maintains whole areas of total cultural ignorance?

"A telly thing," John explains wearily.

My cousin huffs. "There must be a grand jury," he says.

"Who?" I say. "Retired criminals wanting a hobby that keeps their hand in? Keen fans of the sensational headline?"

"It could be people on either side of the thin blue line," my cousin says. "Chief superintendents. Home secretary. These people have a vested interest in ensuring there is only one criminal mastermind at a time. And a contest such as this would provide a useful distraction for ambitious criminals."

"It also gives a knowable structure," I say thoughtfully. "If you always know what the ultimate motive will be, it helps keep tabs on the pattern of crime."

"Good point."

It is unnerving to have someone agree with me all the time. He feels it too, I can see. I can't wait to be rid of him.

"Ok," says John, breaking into the increasingly surreal atmosphere. "So what's our plan, when we find Joan and go down there to rescue her?"

"A simple one," I say. "It does not need to be elaborate. Moriarty wants me, to complete her ascension to the master criminal throne. I will supply Moriarty with me, while you and John use your initiative to extract Watson."

My cousin wrinkles his nose. "What's your exit plan?"

"There isn't one," I say.

John stares.

My cousin rolls his eyes.

"Moriarty needs to preserve me in order to bring me before the supposed Oscars panel and claim her prize," I say. "You will follow me there. We will then be in possession of valuable knowledge - not only that such a body exists but who is on it."

"She could bring you to the jury dead," says my cousin. "Far less trouble."

"She won't kill me," I say. "I have a beautiful mind. -According to her," I add before he can start scathing.

"She's quite the charmer, obviously," he mutters.

"A lot like someone you used to know," John says, and there is something odd in his tone, some old hurt or...jealousy.

"Yes," says my cousin, focusing on his phone, his hair flopping forward to hide his eyes. "Irene Adler."

It is my turn for a jaw-drop moment.

"She's dead," adds my cousin casually.

John says, "Hah."

Not dead, then. "Are you sure?" I say. "The woman I know has been dead at least once so far."

My cousin and I lock eyes again.

I glean that he knows his Adler is not dead, that John suspects she is not, and that they both believe she cannot be the same person as the Irene I know.

My cousin does help to cut a long story short, but the phenomenon is annoying. "It is as if the criminal mastermind plan follows some established template," he says after a moment. "What names to use, what personae to adopt..."

"Two sets of everything," I say, and the first inkling of an answer strikes me hard. I blink, and let the chill of realisation pass through me before speaking again. "Including us," I add lightly.

"Maybe it's because there are two of us that these other names are recyclable," he says with a frown, and this guess is so close that I have to cough through my wince.

"Ok," says John. "So we go to Wapping and you hand yourself over. We follow you to wherever the judging panel is. Then what?"

"Involve the police," I say, shrugging. "Try to gather evidence. I will work from the inside, obviously." I have knockout drugs and reasonable assurances that the dose will not kill anyone.

"It is not convincing if you simply hand yourself over," my cousin states. His bluntness grates on me. "Moriarty will know your partner has been talking to me. It would be much more likely that I deduced her whereabouts and brought you to her in exchange for your partner."

I raise an eyebrow at him.

"Our loving family relationship is well known," he says drily.

"True," I say. I mull it over. "Why would I go with you?"

"You would do anything to get Joan Watson back," he says gravely, and I cannot tell if he is mocking me.

"Right," says John. "Good plan. Great plan. We go to a place chosen by the enemy, to make an exchange she has not agreed to, and assuming that is successful, those of us still free follow her to somewhere else where a shadowy organisation hands out medals for the capture of a Sherlock." He takes a breath. "Then what? The police aren't going to arrive in time to do anything useful."

"John," my cousin says, and actually smiles. "I have no intention of waiting for anyone else. We will have to be useful ourselves."

He jerks his head at their large tea-caddy, sitting on the kitchen counter.

John's eyes widen, and he relaxes. His fingers have been clenching and unclenching. Now they lie limp and loose around his mug.

"Ah, the sweet prospect of violence," I say sarcastically, but the two of them are having a moment and I roll my eyes.

Can my idea about this peculiar situation be right? It would explain the strange doubling of so many names and ideas. Yet it is repellent too.

"Why is your partner also called Watson?" my cousin asks suddenly, as if he is thinking the same thing. John gets up to fetch his coat and fiddle with the unusually large and heavy-seeming tea caddy.

I sigh. "Because yours is, I suspect. Part of our family's fanatical attachment to tradition. My father must have seen her name on the list of candidates for my sober companion and thought it would be a tremendous joke."

My cousin huffs.

He is deducing too. But I will not help him to any conclusions. The truth might be too raw, too sharp, too close to home, and I must set it aside in order to work.

"Let's go," I say before my face can betray my thoughts. "No time like the present, and so on and so forth."

"Hmmm," he says. "If you say so."

He stands, adjusting the collar on his maroon shirt, and eyeing me. I stare back, blinking at a normal rate, breathing held in a pattern consistent with natural anxiety about my partner and no more. This could go on for some time.

John is waiting. "Joan," he reminds us. "Probable torture. Mind games, fascinating, yes, but actual bodily harm, really not very nice."

He is to the point. I can see why my cousin has him around.

We leave for Wapping.

* * *

**Author's note.** Sorry for the delay in updating. Work/life madness ate my evenings and my energy. Next week will actally be even busier but I have a cople of chapters in hand so all should be well. Google The Wapping Project to see a former power station now a very aspirational restaurant. Nice food, weird place. -Sef


	10. Hostage

My cousin is wearing black leather gloves and carrying a gun. I can tell from his gait that it is a pistol of some kind, stowed in the waistband of his Savile row trousers. He is wearing his jacket, of course, but has dispensed with the swirling coat. Perhaps he feels sufficiently Zorro without it.

We are two streets away from the abandoned power station and ready to execute the plan. I have the knockout drugs. I have not mentioned them: they are a close-quarters measure and I expect to use them when alone with Irene, once she has brought me to the grand jury for the Moriarty award. Or whenever is most expedient.

I am unarmed, except my trusty baton of course. I'm pretty handy with that but cannot dodge a bullet. I hope I am right about Irene and her artist's appreciation of my fine brain. If she goes all Damien Hirst on me, this could be a very brief adventure.

"All right?" demands my cousin.

"Of course."

If Watson is in a bad way the drugs could also be used on her, to minimize pain until an ambulance arrives. I must anticipate the worst so that I can continue to operate effectively should I encounter it. I must subvert the visual side of my brain though or the image would indeed stop me in my tracks.

It is still only half past ten in the morning. Not the conventional hour for a master criminal to execute a crime or an enemy - but Irene prides herself on her originality.

John reaches into the back of his jeans and produces a Glock pistol, the compact kind used by almost every army and police force in the world. Since there is no legitimate way for a citizen to carry a firearm in the UK, this must be as illegal as the one in my cousin's trousers.

And I thought _I_ lived on the trigger-happy, gun-toting side of the pond.

I am about to make a sarcastic comment to this effect when I spot a piece of litter on the kerb. A tissue, bright white against the grey granite.

London, even former docklands East End London, is very clean these days. To those of us who were here in the Seventies and Eighties, the transformation is remarkable and difficult to accept. Rubbish stands out.

I pick up the tissue and stare at it.

"Hardly the moment for civic pride," says my cousin.

The tissue has been unfolded from its handy pack and has two letters scrawled on it in glossy pink. _JW_.

"Watson dropped this," I say. "Threw it from the van somehow."

I run ahead, finding another tissue and another. _JW_. The trail guides us to the road where the power station lurks between modern apartment buildings. A whole pack of tissues.

The last one is different. The scribbled initials are not hers. They are mine.

I clutch it, but carefully in case there is any other clue. There is not. She simply chose with the final faint blush from her lips, to write my initials instead of her own.

"She's letting me know she's alive," I say. My voice lacks it customary steadiness.

"Oh, brilliant," says my cousin, and I round on him.

"What else could she do? Tied up in the back of a van, kidnapped and taken she didn't know where, to face a person who will definitely hurt her and probably kill her? Not a lot of options." My fear for her turns easily to anger. My cousin has no idea of attachment, of loyalty. His primary emotions are anger and scorn. He has never experienced love.

I step up to him and press my index finger into his sternum. We glare at each other with matched stubbornness.

"You don't know she was tied up," he says sulkily.

I thrust the tissue in his face. "Slight inversion on the S. She was writing with her left hand."

"Hush," says John, and there is a quiet command to his voice which must result from his military years. "We're here."

The power station is not large, and looks more like a small school or chapel, with its fancy brickwork and narrow chimneys like spires on each corner. The large front doors are covered in _Keep Out Guard Dog!_ notices, but have been forced open and stand now ajar. Our invitation.

"Ok, here we go," says my cousin, and with unnecessary relish grasps my arm and jerks it behind me. He tugs me to the door and kicks it open. I am dragged inside, followed at a cautious distance by John. Once inside, John melts into the shadows of the turbine hall, leaving me to the attentions of my cousin.

"Do you mind," I say, irritated by the rough handling.

"That's good," my cousin murmurs. "Quite convincing. Sound more angry."

He gives my arm a wrenching twist and I yelp and elbow him in the abdomen. For a moment we struggle and then he produces the gun as if this is going to be news to me, and shows me it at close range.

"It's quite real," he says. "Now walk."

"A touching scene," comes a sarcastic female voice. "Now if you can bear to put each other down, do come in."

Footsteps sound in the echoing turbine hall, then from behind a mass of pale green painted machinery, Moriarty appears, her figure monochrome in the dull grey light pouring through the high windows.

My cousin shoves me towards her. I protest and wrestle viciously against his arm but he is stronger than he looks.

"Oh Sherlock," purrs Moriarty. "I never knew you yearned for a man's touch. More signs of weakness."

I sneer at her, but notice that my cousin goes pale with anger at the insult.

"And _you_," she adds, looking him up and down. "What a perfect specimen. A little less shop soiled, a little more - shall we say - brand new in box?"

"This isn't eBay," he snaps. "Hand back the woman. Where is she?"

Moriarty laughs, and comes forward to touch my cheek. I freeze. She smells the same as she used to. Before I knew.

Concentrate. I accepted what she is six months ago. Observe as if I have never seen her before.

I lean away, squinting at her. I cannot detect a weapon beneath her form-fitting jacket and jodhpurs. Good.

Then she turns and snaps her fingers.

Two armed men appear, one of them dragging Watson by the arm. The other carries a plastic chair. They handle the guns with the careless bravado which indicates that they will be more dangerous by accident than design.

The men put Watson on the chair and handcuff her to it, arms behind her back. Moriarty smirks.

I scan Watson and time slows. This happens when I observe. This happened the first time I saw her and saw so much.

I notice bruises on her left cheek (Moriarty is right handed) and a cut under her left eye, the kind of welt left by a knuckle wearing a ring. She is limping slightly too, but I realise it is only her toe which hurts: she got the limp from kicking something hard, presumably whilst trying to escape. I hope it was something belonging to one of her captors, a shin, say, or a skull.

Lastly I look at her eyes.

She is agitated but hiding it. Pleased to see me. Quite natural. Horrified too. Less obvious. Why would she recoil from the sight of me coming to rescue her?

Possibly because I have arrived as a hostage with a gun to my kidneys.

Watson sees it though. She sees the plan. And she disapproves. She was -

I blink before I can stop myself. She was going to withstand, as long as she could, hoping that I would not risk myself by coming to get her.

No reaction. Give no reaction. My first blink is a reflexive double flicker. My second blink is slow and indifferent.

"Sherlock!" Watson says, and time resumes. Her voice cracks. She is gaping at my cousin in his role of traitor. "Don't do this!"

"The price of your freedom," my cousin tells her. He shrugs. "Well worth it."

Watson looks at me. I scowl at her, and my cousin, and say nothing. "No," she says.

"You are irresistible," my cousin tells her. "And underappreciated." His charm is chilling in the extreme.

Watson's eyes flicker. "He treats me ok," she says to my cousin. "I can't let you do this." It sounds weak and thin, and my cousin smiles, sensing his triumph. His fingers twitch on my arm.

"One week at my side and you'll know the difference," he promises her.

Watson's eyes go to me. We stare at each other for a long moment. I see rapid calculation in her dark eyes. Then her gaze slides away, and returns, resentful. "You let them take me," she says, and lifts her chin. "You never even warned me." She turns her gaze on my handsome cousin, and it is warm with gratitude.

If I live I will definitely shake Watson's hand for such a bravura performance. Meanwhile I shrug and sniff. "She was convenient," I tell Moriarty. "You were mistaken if you thought I would come here for her sake."

"Right," says my cousin briskly. "Let Joan go. Here's the man you want. Take him. And as to the rest of it - I don't want to know."

Moriarty looks from him to me to Watson, and laughs out loud. "Oh Sherlock, Sherlock," she says. "What a touching little charade. All for my benefit?"

She walks around us as if at a cattle auction. I turn my face from her like a beast refusing the ramp up to the abattoir van.

"For Joan's benefit," says my cousin impatiently. "I dislike unnecessary torture. Just get on with it."

"And if I don't?" Moriarty asks, raising one eyebrow.

"Then I shoot you and it all gets a lot simpler," says John clearly.

Moriarty looks up. John is on top of a turbine. Moriarty gestures in annoyance and the two guards point their guns at John, but he has already disappeared. "Find him," she orders, and they scramble away.

My cousin smiles for a microsecond. Moriarty does not see.

"Well," Moriarty says. "I am not really in the mood to compromise. I think I'll keep him _and_ her, actually."

There are two cracks of bone on bone from behind the turbines, and two heavy thuds.

"Let Joan go," John says clearly, proceeding across the floor with the Glock aimed at Moriarty's chest. "I am a good shot and can take you out without breaking a sweat."

Moriarty flips open a pocket and produces a very small silver gun. Bother. "You'd die too," she says, aiming at him in turn.

John shrugs. "Has to happen some time."

"Hand over your hostage or my hostage dies," my cousin says, keeping his own weapon trained on me. I curse and struggle but his gloved hand is strong on my arm. I sincerely hope he can actually handle that gun. I do not want to die mid bluff. "You don't need the woman, she knows nothing."

"Oh, but she deserves my attention just as much as dear Sherlock," says Moriarty. She smacks Joan in the face.

I wince empathetically but Watson does not so much as flinch. The look she gives Moriarty is steady and calm, as if she is window shopping in Knightsbridge and has seen a pair of shoes of very slight interest.

Moriarty grabs a handful of Watson's hair and yanks it. Watson does cry out then.

"Last warning," John says conversationally.

"Fine," says Moriarty. She releases Watson's hair with a grimace. "Hand him over then."

My cousin pushes me towards Moriarty.

I pretend to stumble, lunge forward and grab her gun arm, smashing down on the tendons which control grip. The gun drops away and I grab Moriarty and twist her arm backwards.

"Not so fast," says my cousin, keeping the gun on me. "We are going to walk away. Then the two of you can do whatever you want."

I kick Moriarty's gun away, still holding her firmly. She struggles but I do not care if I hurt her physically. I already know I have no way to damage her heart. Revenge, in the pure sense, is not possible. This is a shame, because Moriarty did, in fact, kill the Irene, and the only love I have ever given.

My cousin is picking the lock on Watson's handcuffs.

John helps Watson to her feet.

She runs to me. "Sherlock," she says, but nothing else comes out. She is shivering. I turn away quickly, but gulp in a breath of Watson's sweet earthy scent, lemon and warm spice like a bakery in winter. She is unharmed and my thoughts are clarifying. "I'm sorry," Watson whispers, and John hustles her away.

When they are clear my cousin steps back to leave too.

Part one of the plan. Success.

"Well," says Moriarty. She has ceased to struggle and now appears relaxed in my grasp. She smiles, catlike, her eyelashes lowered. "That was easy."

I stare at her. She is right. It was easy, far too easy.

I drop the hangdog act and address my cousin brusquely. "Something's wrong."

He glances around.

It hits us both at the same moment. My cousin exclaims, I tighten my hands around Moriarty's throat but it is too late.

Doors open at the far end of the hall and men troop in, efficient looking men with neat clothes and accurately handled weapons. John and Watson reappear, herded by another small group.

The nearest man looks at us, and I release Moriarty. My cousin glances at me in dismay, but drops his weapon.

"I'm not the prize," I say. "I am not the way to win the badge of Moriarty."

"The stakes have gone up," Moriarty agrees sweetly. "The game has been raised, to keep out the amateurs."

The men advance towards us and pin our arms behind our backs. They hold us prisoner in front of Moriarty.

"So if capturing Sherlock Holmes isn't enough these days," I say slowly, "what is?"

I look across at my cousin and our eyes meet. Of course.

"Isn't it obvious?" asks Moriarty. She nods at her minions.

I crash to the ground beneath a heavy boot as she continues with a silvery laugh, "Two Sherlock Holmes."


	11. Fifth iteration

Chairs are brought and we are tied to them. I try to look dismayed at this, rather than relieved: removing oneself from a chair is the easiest thing in the world once you know how. I sneak a grin at my cousin but he is frowning.

John looks furious. Moriarty has left, and the armed men have taken away John and Sherlock's guns and my baton. John seems tempted to get up and run at the footsoldiers, chair and all, as they stand against the door in the far wall, but he is watching my cousin. Waiting for a signal. Or just making sure he is ok.

Watson is watching me and Moriarty's soldiers alternately. On the threatening men, her gaze is blank and cold. On me - I am not sure.

Watson has dark eyes - a deep brown, lit with silver by early morning sunshine and an interesting bronze by firelight. She rolls her eyes near constantly when I am speaking: expressing despair, or fatigue, or (most often) reluctant acceptance of my theories. Her eyes save us a lot of time. But now she is holding her eyes in restraint, the expression purposefully drained from them, and her face a steady mask. She is hiding her thoughts from me, and given I allowed her to be kidnapped, I understand why.

I bite my lip involuntarily and will her to be patient.

Watson has patience, giant amounts of it. She lives with me, QED. She can sit silent when I am thinking and neither interrupt nor disturb me: a remarkable skill. Yet she is not mentally absent during those times. She is also thinking. She thinks as much as I do.

Where did she come from? An agency. Picked by my father. This represents an increasingly disturbing thought, especially as I like her so much. It is almost like parental care. Can she really be so perfect a choice?

No. Her name was Watson. Had it been Tyler, or Noble, or Pond, she would have been passed over. My sire's joke has been his one great gift to me, and unintentional. He meant her to fix me and leave. She - did help me. And she didn't leave.

He could not have known that, thinking only what perfect symmetry he was creating either side of the Atlantic. A word in Mike Stamford's ear, and a suitable Baker Street flatshare was established. A matching name, a whim, another nod to what I had always thought was irritating but benign. Five minutes, this morning, with my smartphone and Baker Street's blindingly fast WiFi, and I had established a complete absence of randomness. Adler, Moriarty, Holmes and... Watson. No coincidence.

I am the fifth iteration of Sherlock Holmes. My cousin, a little younger, is the sixth. There may be more - others killed in the Great War or by Spanish Flu, knocked out of action by polio or shell shock or any of the tragedies which befall people despite the protection of rank and privilege.

Watson, though she does not know it, is the fifth. John, the fourth.

There have been four Irene Adlers, including the one I knew. One Holmes worked alone his entire life and took no partner, companion or lover. He married, of course, but only as much as expected.

There have been six Moriartys. Every one of them has been defeated.

This is small consolation when one is tied to a chair, but I find I am far less interested in defeating Moriarty than in foiling the man who brought us all here. The one who constructed this generation's scenario. The whys involved in that, are far more intriguing than the motivation behind becoming a master criminal, centre of a secretive network, yada yada yada.

We are not coincidence. We are creations. And who has the power to create? Parents.

What hold does this person - or, given its hundred and fifty year span, this group, have over the Holmes family? And why recycle the names? Mere amusement? Do they attach a sinister meaning to these names?

"You do know you mutter to yourself," my cousin says conversationally.

"Only when picking a lock," I say.

We pause. We both have blue eyes, a family trait. Oh god, we are living proof of this charade. "We're not the first," I say, and the energy rushes from me. It pools around the powder coated legs of my plastic chair, leaving me a mere lump of flesh within some handcuffs.

"I'm the sixth," he says, and gives me a hard stare.

I nod.

"I feel like I should have those awful Roman numerals after my name," he says. Extreme disdain.

"Do it - you don't even need a deed poll for something like that." I have to pick my lock before he does his. Personal pride. "It would suit you."

"Fuck off."

This is as close to affection, I suspect, as we will ever get.

There is a pause and we both cast off the handcuffs and rise. I move, of course, to Watson, but my cousin got there first. I undo John instead. He stands, rubbing his wrists.

I look around. One guard in here, but plenty outside. And no sign, as yet, of the judging panel.

"Yeah, Sherlock, a plan would be handy round about now," says John.

Watson is looking at me. Looking to me? She will be disappointed. There is no plan.

"Luckily, there is a plan," announces my cousin.

Before he can trump me, the door opens and Moriarty appears. "So," she says, smiling in a saccharin way at me, and then my cousin. "Time for Part Two. Choices."

* * *

Author's Note: A brief chapter while I sort out the next few sections. It is all written but needs some major attention that I have not been able to give this past week. But it is nearly there. Showdowns will occur. Snarkiness and clash of egos and giant realisations will ensue. -Sef


	12. Slow and inefficient

"Look closely at the space you occupy," Moriarty instructs in the ringing tones of a tour guide. "You may have observed that windows and doors are tightly sealed."

"Had they not been you would now be declaiming to an empty room," says my cousin.

She smiles at him. "Your powers are clearly at their peak. Did you also notice that every crack, every possible airway, has been taped up? That even the light fittings and door paraphernalia have been amended to form as airtight a space as can be managed in a short time and with –" she glances disdainfully at the guards – "limited resources."

I look at the walls. No skirting boards. Just a lot of sealed off pipes which used to run to the various turbines…. Except that some of them are new. Two pipes.

"Let's take a brief walk," Moriarty says. She clicks her fingers at the guard by the door and he unlocks it. We all tense, ready to charge, but she sighs, lifts an eyebrow, and shows us her gun. "Everyone is armed. Except you. Please try to think."

She walks us out into the corridor and opens the door to the room next door. This is a larger space, containing some canisters, some old crates, and three plastic chairs set out in a row, in front of a TV mounted on a wheeled stand.

"Observation," says my cousin. He has a gift for the obvious.

"And a switch," says Moriarty, indicating a complicated-looking manifold resting on the nearest chair. She touches the small wheel on the manifold. It is a miniature version of the kind of wheel they use to seal off a submarine, or a bank vault. "I turn this, and release the gas."

I blink. Gas. Really? My eye follows the tubes leading out of the manifold and to the wall.

Watson has been walking around the room, her head turning as she takes in its bleak fittings. The guards watch her with smug tolerance. They have the guns. As Moriarty says _gas_, Watson stops, and turns to me.

"Slow and inefficient," says my cousin.

"Surely you won't hoping for a quick death?" Moriarty asks.

"I was hoping for more of a challenge, frankly," he tells her.

I gesture at the chairs. "Who sits here? You, and…?"

"As if I would tell you," Moriarty says. "The judges. Of course."

Just two of them. It seems odd. And as if she is one of them. Also wrong. The whole thing seems like a setup, but one which she is also being taken in by. It is as if she is being allowed to carry out this elaborate performance, while the true orchestrator watches, mocking, from afar. And who does that remind me of?

"Of course," I say. "But you mentioned choices."

"Yes. You can each choose if you get the gas, or watch the rest being gassed. Well. Not all of you. One of you has no choice. One of you will die regardless. I'm afraid you had it coming," she says, turning to Watson.

Watson's gaze flicks to me. I see a decision in her eyes. The next moment she is on the floor, and a wail rises from her lips. "Not gas," she says brokenly. Her hair falls in her face and her hands scrabble at the linoleum. "Not gas, it's too horrible, no, help, somebody do something..."

I stand still.

"You can avoid this, of course, "says Moriarty to me.

"What, double points for turning one of us to your side?" asks my cousin.

"In essence," Moriarty says, without breaking eye contact with me. She has very blue eyes, and even in her pseudo combat gear she is beautiful. There was always something ethereal about her, some quality which disarmed the observer even as she acted out her monstrous plans.

I gaze at her and let her disarm me, now. "You want me to abandon my principles and my friends," I say. "And in return you offer -what?"

"Your life."

I snort.

"If it means so little to you, then please, go ahead and sacrifice yourself. It will accomplish nothing. I will still win. Your friends will still be dead. And you will be too."

Watson's sobs continue. John is crouching beside her with his arm around her, shielding her from Moriarty.

"God, the tedium. -There is _always_ the offer of a handshake across the moral divide." My cousin's baritone cuts into my conversation with Moriarty. "Yet it rarely turns out well for either party."

"I have no intention of making Jim's mistake," Moriarty says, curling her lip.

"You knew him then," my cousin says at once, and I see the full weight of his attention fall upon her. Every memory, every thread in the weave of his knowledge is being brought into play, searching for the one which will remove us from this situation.

"Don't try to distract me with reminiscences," she throws back. She gives him a cold smile. "And I won't try to distract you with offers I know you can refuse. There is a reason I chose your older cousin, you know."

"I interrupted your plans," I say.

She tosses her hair back over her shoulder. "Don't flatter yourself, darling. It was mainly your evident sexual availability which enabled my plans to continue, uninterrupted."

I am more irritated by this than I would like. The idea that my cousin was considered impervious to her charms, and I, a weaker option, formed the mark, is offensive. Yet true, for all that. I set it aside. "So why offer me escape now? If my life is not valuable to me, why should it be so to you?"

"Your little friend was correct." Moriarty points her gun in the direction of Watson's hunched, trembling form. "I value you. Aesthetically. And I still believe that in my company you can be more, achieve more than you have yet dreamed of, without these bounds of so called morality."

"Hmmm," I say. "Well, the extra-curricular programme was good. I don't imagine that will be reinstated immediately."

My cousin's face shows horror and disgust.

"Not immediately," says Moriarty.

"Something to work towards, then," I say, and rub my hands. "But it is not stimulation of the body which motivates me, as you well know. It is my mind which drives me."

"I can promise exercise for that," she says. "Your brain could certainly use a little shaping up." She gestures around at our sorry scene.

"I will consider your offer," I say. I am keeping one eye on Watson and John in the corner. It is wrong to see her so weak and helpless. But I cannot win Moriarty's trust, even for the short time it will take me to betray it, if I go and comfort Watson now. "How long have I got?"

Moriarty sneers. "You have already made your decision. This is a transparent attempt to buy your friends a little more time."

"I don't have friends," I say. "But yes. I do not believe in senseless loss of life."

"It is not senseless. This one act removes an annoyance, a threat and a would-be rival, in one move, and places you next to me, at the top of the evolutionary tree." She gives a short laugh. "You would become, in essence, Moriarty."

This thought strikes me hard. "I bet that's a new one in the book," I say. "Do I get a look at that book, by the way?" But she only smiles.

My cousin is scowling. John gets up, leaving Watson drained and shaking on the floor, and goes to stand by him.

"Oh please," says Moriarty. "Don't hold back on my account. Will it be a sweet embrace or a manly handshake as you growl that it's been an honour?" She points at my cousin. "Never the sentimental type. I will enjoy watching your final choices. I take it that you prefer not to save yourself and your friend?"

She gestures, and the guards shepherd us back into our taped, sealed room.

"I want you the other side of that door," my cousin says to Moriarty.

"Your choice," she says. "All the more entertaining for me."

"I'll go," I say.

Watson looks up. I register that behind her screen of hair, her face is free of tears. She ducks her head down again at once.

"Good," says Moriarty.

"Don't," says Watson in a low voice. "Please don't. Sherlock. Think."

The sound of Watson's voice wrenches at me. I ignore it. Moriarty, and the gas free corridor, are waiting. Moriarty is already thinking about our future. I see it in her avaricious gleam.

"I am thinking," I say lightly. This is true. I have the ampoules in my jacket and I will use them before Moriarty can give the order. In the event of some timer or failsafe on the gas release, I will throw my brain and body into berserker mode and cause as much damage as possible to all persons and equipment involved.

My cousin moves to block my path but John stops him. "It's his decision," John says. His tone is cold.

Is John hoping for a miraculous change of heart from me once I am through that door? If so he is showing more faith than Watson, who has not even got to her feet.

"I'm sorry, Watson," I say. "But this is the logical choice."

"Please," she says. "I'm asking. Trust me."

Moriarty is by the door, one of her guards looming behind her to prevent any charge towards escape.

I pause as I step past Watson. I turn back towards the room, away from Moriarty. I do not dare risk a word, but perhaps Watson will look up at me.

She does. She shakes her head at me, a plea.

I speak her name silently, gently. She must know that I would never truly leave her to die. Bit she shows no sign of that. She is trying to tell me something, something important, but I do not know what.

Moriarty's hand is on my elbow. "Come along, darling. Jobs to be done."

We walk along the grey strip-lit corridor. The door slams shut behind us.

The guard is walking ahead. A classic mistake.

I reach into my jacket and clasp the knockout phial. The first will be for Moriarty, I think. The man guarding her will be easy to overpower with surprise and Moriarty's gun.

I slow my pace, draw out the ampoule, and raise it to Moriarty's face. She exclaims, and the guard hears, and faster than I anticipated, he runs back to us and grabs me before I can get the gun. The guard frees Moriarty from my grasp, belts me over the head with a beefy hand, and drags me back into the room where the others are checking the seals on the windows and exclaiming over my shocking betrayal.

The door slams again, and now I am on the doomed side of it.

"Well," I say, looking around. "This is awkward."

Watson walks up to me and opens her mouth to speak. A squeak comes out and she shakes herself in irritation. "You idiot," she says then, and her shoulders slump.

She sinks to the floor, her back against the wall.

"Right," says my cousin. "Shall we escape now, or later?"

A voice – male – booms into the room. I squint and see micro speakers attached to the light fixtures. This whole thing is far more intricate than it needs to be. Whose ego is this meant to feed? What is it intended to test? "Now would be better for you," says the voice. "Unless you relish the idea of suffocating death."

"Who are you?" I demand, but there is no reply.

The guard has retreated to the corridor, and the door is locked. The windows are twenty feet up brick walls, and the situation does not look good.

"Gas it is, then," says the voice from the speakers. "Switching on now." We hear a hiss as, presumably, the little wheel is turned.

Watson sighs, and closes her eyes. She seems quite calm. This is good. Providing emotional support has never been my forte. And I do not want Moriarty to witness more evidence of Watson's vulnerability. I found it distressing, but Moriarty would delight in a further display.

John is looking at my cousin, lips parted, about to speak. My cousin gives a shake of his head and holds John's gaze, serious and intense. They are communing, silent and complete, without words. A perfect partnership, and total trust between them, even in this moment, these ultimate seconds.

I look back to Watson and see her cast down, her hands in her lap. Her clothes, always drab and grey, are draped in dull folds around her body and her booted feet stick straight out on the floor in front of her.

"Watson," I say. As she lifts her head I grasp her hand and raise her to her feet. "Better to die standing, don't you think?" I say. She glances around as if waking.

"You're here," she says.

"Yes." Obviously. What is her point?

"Then I guess it doesn't make a difference."

I have to take a moment. Then I understand. "I would never take Moriarty's side," I say. "Not for love, not for money, not for life itself. As is perfectly evident in the fact that I am here in this room and not on the other side of the observation glass."

Her mouth twitches.

I am astonished that she would even consider that I might abandon her. How can I express it, quickly, completely, in the little time we have remaining?

An obvious method presents itself but this strikes me as crass and inappropriate as well as altogether untested. Watson would doubtless spend her final moments smacking me across the face, and I  
would end my time knowing that I deserved it.

I look at my cousin and John. They do not feel the need to hug. They are not giving Moriarty the satisfaction. And neither will I. "Watson," I say. "Moriarty doubtless expects a desperate display of panic or last minute lust. Let us deny her that."

Watson's eyes brighten. "Good idea." She comes and stands by me and folds her arms. "I'm good with this, how about you?"

I match her gesture. "Perfect." I give her a quick grin.

"There's something else," she adds conversationally. "If we're standing, it's easier to walk out the door when John kicks it open."

I blink at her.

"What do you mean?" demands my cousin, breaking his focus on John.

Watson smiles, and if I did n_o_t have total confidence in her moral standpoint then the menace in her teeth would worry me. "I switched the input and output valves."

My cousin and I gape at her. John smiles.

She shrugs. "I did some time in anaesthetics. Gas control is a big part of your day. I recognised the type of valve being used and swapped it round when I was on the floor. John helped."

I flashback to her sobbing fit, her overt and startling display of weakness, and realised that I, along with Moriarty and the judging panel, have been duped. "We've got the air," I say.

"And they've got the gas," says my cousin.

"Come on," says Watson. "Let's go."

"I'm on it," says John. He grins at Watson, and she at him, and my cousin and I exchange an embarrassed glance which says, in effect, we must never speak of this again.


	13. H

Panel games have never interested me. People sitting behind a table answering the questions of a man at a podium - however you dress it up, the panel game is unutterably dull. Teamwork is not about conferring on the date of a medieval monarchy. It is about reliance on your comrades, about trust and shared responsibility for the outcome.

Yet I am here in a former power station, looking for (up to) three judges, who may or may not be unconscious by now.

The place is quiet. I know, without needing it confirmed, that the guards have gone. The corridors echoes with the distinctive sound of absence.

My cousin paces beside me as we head to the room where Moriarty showed us the gas, and the chairs. "An act," he says. "Someone wants us to believe their organisation has power and resources. But I suspect that in fact we are dealing with a one man band."

"Or one woman," says Watson. She has found a hair tie from somewhere and now has a ponytail, swinging as she walks.

I drop back to walk beside her. An odd sensation trickles through me. I feel as if I have not seen her all day. This is technically true - I have not seen her between my trip to Moriarty's suite last night and an hour ago. Yet an absence of half a day, or a day, is not unusual. And she has been our primary focus until we were reunited here. Why, then, do I feel that I have missed her? It is akin to a sensation of homesickness - a yen for a concept, a longing for something which cannot be held in your hands. The idea of home, a slippery fantasy.

Watson sends sharp glances at me as we stride along the corridor. "She won't be dead," Watson says. "Not enough time."

"That was not my train of thought." Concern for Moriarty? No.

"You looked a little - out of it."

"I was merely focusing on the human aspect of the case, Watson."

She is uncertain. Good. Normality restored. "You, Watson," I say with plausible briskness, "you." I watch her from the corner of my eye. She frowns and smiles and is neutral again, within a second. Unreadable Watson. I doubt she truly believes that, knowing me as she does, but at least she maintains a dignified level of denial.

"Why are there so many Sherlocks and Watsons?" she asks, recovering from the pleasant discovery of my attention. "Who would want to set that up?"

"You go directly to the point, Watson." I approve. "I believe I know the answer to that, and I hope I am wrong."

"Someone you know," she says in a low voice. She understands instinctively that this is not a topic for my cousin's ears. "It has to be. No one would go to so much trouble and not make contact."

"Like an arsonist come back to watch the flames?" I say. "I take your analogy, Watson, but in this case I believe we are highly unlikely ever to encounter the person behind this."

She presses her lips together. No lipstick left. Not that she is improved by lipstick anyway. Lipstick only makes her appear more conventional, which on reflection must be useful, even while it is wholly inaccurate. There is nothing ordinary about Watson.

I rarely touch her. Companionship, in my book, is a non contact sport. Nonetheless now I reach out and rest my middle and ring fingers on her elbow. She stops. I withdraw my hand. "I am sorry I could not protect you," I say. "I broke a promise."

"A promise you could never keep," she says. "There will always be danger. I accept that. It goes with the territory."

"I found the tissues," I blurt out. "Including the final one." My initials. Her last thought, a plea to me?

She grimaces, shrugs.

"I didn't know if you were dead," I tell her. "It upset me, Watson. Please take every care. We are not out of danger yet."

Her expression softens. She is touched. I rear back a little, concerned that she will attempt a hug, but she only takes my hand and squeezes it. "I'm not leaving," she says. "We go together, remember?"

I slide my hand away - too much skin to skin, sensory overload inappropriate between us - and nod once.

We resume our hurry towards the judging room.

* * *

My cousin and John are wrestling with the locked door as I arrive with Watson. Of the two of them, John looks as if he has all the toughness, but my cousin has a vicious strength he can employ at will. Deliberate excessive response: his reaction to being bullied at school, I suspect.

I used charm. And running away.

The door gives way to a kick and the stench of domestic gas pours into the corridor. I dart inside and find Moriarty and two others, a man and a woman in black brocade jackets, sitting up but barely conscious against the far wall.

I snatch up Moriarty and carry her to the corridor. John is employed in smashing windows to get air into the place.

Even sixty seconds in that gas-filled room has left me with a headache. My stomach is churning.

With Moriarty in my arms I start down the corridor. We are almost back at the power station entrance. It is time to leave.

I hear my cousin and John retrieve the other two. Watson is beside me.

Moriarty murmurs against my chest. She tries to lift her arms around my neck, to hold on to me, but she is weak.

I lean away from her as she presses her face into my neck. "Sherlock," she says.

"Why were you still in the room?" I ask. "You must have smelled the gas."

"The door was locked," she says, head lolling back, her words slurred.

Unpleasant. And for my chief suspect, out of character. Or is it? What do I truly know about him? My information is mostly thirty years out of date.

"Lucky for you I have no interest in watching you die," I say.

We are back in the main turbine hall. Nobody is there. But in the centre of the space is a TV on a stand, like the one we saw earlier in front of the judged.

As we head for the front doors, the TV crackles and pops into life. "So," says the same voice we last heard promising us gas, "here we are."

The screen is blank. As I pause, it brightens and a plain H appears, white on black.

"Who are you?" demands my cousin. He has the semi conscious man dangling over his shoulder in a fireman's lift. John is holding the woman likewise. I am the only one with my burden clasped to my bosom like a runaway bride.

Moriarty opens her eyes. Smiles sleepily at me. "You'll never know," she says. "H is the lynchpin."

"I am the financier and administrator," corrects H. "And I am withdrawing support from you, with immediate effect. You have not fulfilled your early promise."

I am torn between my desire to escape, to bring Watson to safety and Moriarty to Pentonville - and my desire to find out more about H. "You were prepared to kill us to test ..." I frown.

"Us," says my cousin. "Not Moriarty." His eyes flick to me, full of doubt.

"Both," I say. "A neat but repulsive two-for-one offer." My arms are shaking, although Moriarty is not heavy.

Watson is at the front doors. She puts her shoulder to the one still ajar and forces it open. Fresh air seeps in. Moriarty smells of gas. Her eyes are open and despite H's words she looks smug. Watson heaves the door wide.

H is silent. His screen crackles. Modern TVs don't do that: the sound is a piece of theatre, to accompany the rest of the performance we have been involved in today.

With that thought I spin round. Moriarty clings to me laughing like a child on a merry-go-round. I ignore her. "Watson," I call. "Search this man's pockets."

She goes to where my cousin has the male judge drooping over his shoulder. The man is dressed in a black velvet coat, lots of brocade, and black denim. He is around sixty, and looks bewildered and afraid.

"Back left pocket," instructs my cousin. "A wallet there." He stands supporting the semi-conscious man and watching me.

Watson pulls a wallet from the man's jeans.

"Look for the Equity card," I tell her.

John says, "Actors?"

Watson holds up a card. "Driver's licence," she says. "Nothing else but that seems a little careless for a master criminal."

"Grey complexion, underweight, an outfit best described as a costume, yes, actor," says my cousin. "The woman too." My conclusion exactly.

I round on the TV. "You would let these people die," I say. "Just to amuse yourself with this -" I cannot think of the word. No description satisfies the horror which grips me. I am nauseated by what I have learned, and by the proximity of Moriarty, who is now running her small fingers over my hair and neck. "Don't touch me!"

Watson comes over and gives Moriarty an assessing stare. "Coordination almost normal. She could probably stand unaided."

I set Moriarty down. Sure enough she straightens and sneers at Watson. I want to wipe my hands. I want to run away, far away. I want my bees, and quiet, and sitting on the roof in peaceful contemplation until Watson brings me tea.

John says, "Sherlock, we need to get this woman to a hospital. I don't like the sound of her breathing." He is not talking to me.

My cousin scans John's burden. "Lung condition," he agrees.

Watson comes to me. She can detect my panic. She does not embarrass me with her concern, however, just holds out her hand. I give her my phone. She dials the emergency services while John and my cousin take the actors outside.

Moriarty coughs, stretches, appears fine.

"No answer?" I say to H. "I wish I were surprised."

My cousin returns, followed by John. He examines my face, his eyes shimmering. I know he has noted my familiar tone to H. But he says nothing. If he has guessed, then he would be wise to leave this alone.

"It was all in hand," H declares smoothly. "And Moriarty was defeated." He sounds disappointed.

"Not quite," Moriarty says. She is now straight and steady on her feet. Her resilience is disturbing. "I will walk away."

"No, we will stop you," counters my cousin.

"You have a date with a high security prison," I tell her.

She makes a baby-face. "Aw, do you think so?" Normal voice. "My people are already here. Did you really think I would take part in any of this without an exit plan?"

She looks over her shoulder and her original goons walk in through the open front door. They are armed.

John and my cousin look at each other wearily. Another confrontation. I sigh too. We group in the centre of the room.

Moriarty laughs as we are once again at the wrong end of her weapons.

"What's the plan," Watson says to me in a low voice.

I take her hand and place it on my chest. "If only I had one, my dear Watson." I gaze into her dark eyes, and slip her splayed palm inside my jacket. Her eyes widen. "But this time, I have nothing, nothing to give you."

She blinks at me. Her fingers are over my shirt pocket. "That's ok," she whispers, and gives me a peck on the cheek. "I know you'll think of something." She slips away, leaving the memory of her kiss on my stubbled skin.

"Of course, murder with a firearm is insufficiently satisfying for true revenge," Moriarty says conversationally.

I am fully aware of this. But I have neither my toolbox nor any desire to use its contents on Moriarty even though she did, in fact, kill the woman I loved. No: a less subtle attack is required.

Moriarty reaches into her jacket and produces a folding knife. "A two inch blade," she says, showing it to us. "Quite legal to carry for practical daily use. Yet quite deadly too, when properly applied."

She darts to Watson and sneers at her. "The lack of action was becoming boring," Moriarty says, and lifts the knife to Watson's throat.

My cousin and John cry out, but Watson swings her arm up and thrusts the ampoule she took from my shirt into Moriarty's face. Moriarty drops like a stone and Watson scrambles away with her hand over her mouth and nose.

I take advantage of the surprise to fling my remaining ampoules at the armed men. As they react, John disarms them and my cousin flattens them with an efficient chop to the neck.

"Don't breathe it in," I say, and we all withdraw to the far end of the room.

"What the hell -" says John. Moriarty is prone on the ground.

"Knockout capsule," says my cousin to me. "Joan picked your pocket."

"I had help," she says, cutting her eyes at me.

I catch my cousin's fleeting glance of admiration for Watson. He sees me watching, and gives a mouth-shrug.

We stare at each other. He knows. I am sure he has worked out who H must be. But I do not want him to witness the next conversation.

My cousin narrows his eyes. How he hates being left out. But I gave him London, when I crossed the Atlantic, and when this is finished he can have it all back.

He gives a tiny nod. "Yours," he says.

Then he turns to John. "Let's find where H's cable leads, shall we? And no doubt Lestrade will be thrilled to see us."

They jog away through the door, with matched footsteps. I hear a distant siren.

I turn to the TV.

H has given no signal. His screen is blank, buzzing slightly with white noise. He may have made no move to save us, but he has been watching. His claim that everything was under control - implying that we were in no real danger - is small comfort.

His coldness and cruelty strike me once again. This mercy he has apparently shown. It is not kindness. It is another intellectual game, another way to sate his own unendurable boredom.

I must not become like him, no matter what. Nor must my cousin. We must pledge ourselves against any such impulse.

Also, we must put an end to this charade. I step forward. "You and I need to have a little chat."

"When we are alone," he says.

I look at Watson. "Ms Watson is my partner and protege," I say. "There is nothing you can say to me that she may not hear."

There is a pause. "Ms Watson was a wise choice for you," H muses then.

An admission.

"H," I say. "Assure me that Moriarty will be punished for her crimes. Her crime in particular against - me. My family."

I cannot be more explicit. It is too painful. My aunt. Moriarty's device to bring me here: an elderly and vulnerable woman, who should have been safe in her home.

H coughs. "There is an element of regret for that. -But for the rest," recovering immediately, "Moriarty's crimes were her challenge from me."

"Yes, but it went wrong, didn't it? You created a monster." If she had died in the gas I could not have mourned her.

"It was always a risk."

"Too much of a risk," I snap.

Watson moves close to my side.

"Jim was elegant at least," H concedes. "Clever. Moriarty let herself down. Love," he adds with deep scorn.

I shrug this off. "Give me an assurance. No more of this game. It ends here, with me, my cousin."

"It is a tradition," says H.

"It is wrong," I say.

"Morality does not interest me." Bland tone.

"Clearly,"I say. "But you have been discovered. Now stop. That's all."

"And you couldn't make this request of your cousin? Does he not get to choose between stimulation and boredom?"

I ignore this last. "It is not a request. Do it or I will reveal your identity. It would rather harm your business interests, I suspect, to be publicised as the ringleader of a finishing school for murderers and terrorists."

"Some of my business interests would see that as a plus." A wry chuckle.

"No doubt. Would you rather the world knew, then?" I could do it. Expose him, expose all of this. One phone call is all it would take.

"It would damage you too," he says, and Watson turns to me. Her expression is stern. I think of the brownstone and hesitate. But Watson's voice is strong in my head, instructing me not to give in.

"It has been ably demonstrated that I can recover from damage, even quite severe damage," I say, and Watson smiles.

H pauses. The sirens are growing louder. An ambulance. Two police cars. My cousin will pull the plug on H at any moment.

At last he speaks. "True. You stand once again on your own two feet. As does your cousin, when John is on hand. As an exercise my plan has had many benign outcomes."

"And many evil ones."

"I will cease," he says then.

He waits but I do not reply.

The TV begins to crackle and buzz. White noise. An archetypal melodramatic exit, or my cousin interfering with the wires? H's voice when it sounds again, is faint. "Goodbye Sherlock. One thing. What finally gave me away?"

I pause. "Many things. The truth? The fact that you didn't show up in person, even for a mass family showdown. It was too typical to ignore."

A noise like a chuckle comes over the fuzzy speakers. "Touche."

"Goodbye."

I stride towards the daylight and the sharp keen of the police sirens.

Watson turns back and speaks to H. "One more thing. Maybe you picked me to work with Sherlock, but I did not have to accept. I chose the assignment. You never had me on a string."

She flicks her pony tail over her shoulder. The TV goes dead. I offer my arm to Watson, and we step into the silvery London afternoon, side by side.


	14. Love undeclared

The police, the paramedics, the general fuss of an apparent gas leak and actual gas poisoning in an East London wasteland, occupy much of the afternoon. By the time we are free to leave we are all bedraggled with weariness, hunger and the after-effects of adrenaline.

"Let's eat," says my cousin, and gets no argument. "I know a place-"

The place is a Moroccan cafe next to Spitalfields Market, and John exclaims that it is round the corner from his surgery. "They know me," my cousin says, waving airily at the owner.

"How do they know you?" John demands. "They know _me_."

"How do you think I appear exactly as you walk out of work?" counters my cousin. "Magic?"

"I wouldn't put it past you," mutters John.

The owner is both surprised and a little afraid to see my cousin leading a party in for an early supper. We eat ravenously, even my cousin, and leave without being asked for a bill.

"Your leg all right?" John asks Watson, seeing her still slightly limping as we head out in the twilight.

She nods. "I need to move," she says. "Not the leg. Just - I need to dance."

"Reaffirmation of life after a perilous experience," I agree. "A common reaction."

"I need a beer," says John.

"And I need to sit and let today's events settle, "says my cousin. "The neural pathways are remaking themselves and it must be orderly."

I have the same need, but I suspect – I hope – for different reasons. I am troubled by what has happened, and must hide this from Watson or she will become concerned. I am not in any danger of falling off the wagon. Only, perhaps, of falling off the family tree.

"I know a place," I tell them all. "Assuming it's still there."

"Where?" demands my cousin, affronted by the notion that I have better local knowledge of his city than he does.

"The Gardenia," I say. "I used to frequent it post-case, in my wilder days."

He gives me an odd look. "It's still there."

He knows it. Strange. I would not have put him down as the club type. Especially not this kind of club. But it is a day of discovery, and happily not all revelations are malign. "Then let's go."

The Gardenia is up an alleyway and is guarded by two black iron gates and a pair of doormen. It is open - always - and when I shake the hand of my old acquaintance at the gate, he waves us through with a grin, taking a good long look at Watson's legs, and then John's bottom, as he does. It's that kind of place, and in my insatiable days, was one of my favourites.

I lead the way into the private club, which is on a small cobbled courtyard and has the appearance, on the outside, of a centuries-old coaching inn.

Inside it is different. Bright modern rooms serve food and drink, in a selection of noise levels, and the largest room has a gallery bar overlooking a dance floor. Again my handshake secures us access, and even at this early evening hour there are revellers: a selection of men and women of varying styles and ages, standing chatting at the bar or engaged in desultory dancing to the salsa music.

"Is this a good place for you?" Watson asks me, eyeing the glittering bar. I smile and order, based on deduction, two India Pale Ales (John's usual plus my cousin keeping him company despite having no taste for the stuff), a Bud Lite for Watson and a plastic bottle of water for myself. Watson approves, and my cousin sniffs at being predictable.

We climb to the gallery and sit in an easy group, slurping our drinks. I have never seen Watson with alcohol before, and as I expected she sips delicately at the beer for half an hour before abandoning it. My cousin summons a carafe of water. I could request canapes, champagne, strippers or hookers if I so choose, but right now I do not feel the need to trounce him. Anyway he is already irritated by the number of semi-clad young women who hover by our table hoping he will make eye contact. His loss, my gain.

The volume of the music increases with the lateness of the hour, and the club grows busy. Watson gets up and disappears downstairs to dance. Moments later I see her shaking her stuff amidst a group of people half her age, and moving better than any of them.

I catch John looking. "She's beautiful," he says, as if he has only just noticed.

"Convention says so," I say carelessly.

He punches me on the arm. "I say so."

My gaze wanders to anther part of the room. "I see a group of females in need of gender diversity in their social circle..."

John glances at the huddle of bare-armed, miniskirted girls clutching drinks, handbags and each other. "Could do," he says, with a glance at my cousin. My cousin rolls his eyes and points to his phone. He is staying put.

John and I descend, and dance, attracting more admiration than you might expect for two fortysomething men in casual clothes. Watson joins us and makes everyone look bad with her superior grace.

"Come this way," I yell, and drag them to the next room where the lights are dimmer and the music darker and heavier. More my style. The crowd is rampant and I focus, exert myself, needing to have the stress of the day sweated from me, beat by reverberating beat. It does not seem to be working, however. The deaths, my aunt, the pattern of repeated Holmes and Watsons, circle in my head and mere movement cannot shake the thoughts free.

The drug would do it. But I will never do drugs again. Sex might do it, but I am sharing a suite with Watson and it would hardly be polite to bring company there. I could travel elsewhere, of course, but I don't want to leave her, not tonight.

If I am being honest with myself, I want to keep her nearby for my own consolation as much as hers. She steadies me, calms me, soothes me. If I appear at all unwell she will take care of me with tea and quiet companionship. My Watson, yes.

While I have been mulling over my late night comfort options, Watson has acquired an assortment of male admirers, although she is pretending not to notice. John is at the centre of a group of women of a certain age who are enjoying themselves far more than is decent.

Then I see my cousin, no jacket, just his dark shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the collar loosened, weaving through the throng towards us. I expect him to tell us that he has had enough of the pointless socialising and is leaving, but he astonishes me by tapping John on the arm and joining him to dance with, or at least near, the giggling, shrieking women. He has some moves, too. The women fall back in awe and then try to regroup to take advantage of the handsome addition to their set, but my cousin pays them no attention.

Then he slides over to Watson, detaching her from dancing with John, and they shimmy hip to hip in overacted seriousness. The overt sexiness is a hair's breadth from genuine, and as they limbo and sway I can no longer tell if Watson is pretending. My cousin's eyes are dark and intense, and he matches her move for move in perfect synchronicity.

John seems transfixed. Watson in motion has that effect. "Unlucky," I comment, grimacing at Watson.

"Not really," he says with a small smile.

"Sherlock!" Watson yells at me. "Come on!"

My cousin whispers in her ear, his lips brushing her cheek, his fingers curling around hers as he speaks.

I pause in the act of moving to join them. My cousin in heat: not a thing I wish to experience up close, or at all. I understand, of course. The post-case high. The need to do, to act, to be - to prove oneself human and physical again. It is the brain's rebellious reaction after intensive deduction, and one of the very reasons I used to seek out this club.

Watson slides her arms around my cousin's waist and pulls him into a close embrace, kissing his cheek. She has class. No dance floor snogging for her. She speaks into his ear too, standing on tiptoe to reach.

I ought to stop staring but cannot. This has always been mysterious to me - Watson's continuing single state. She occasionally leaves the brownstone at night, claiming to have a date but returns promptly at ten-thirty like a teenager under threat of being grounded, her hair unmussed, her lipstick in place, her breathing regular and her pupils at an expected level of dilation for walking into the dimly-lit library and tripping over me. She has failed to come home only once, and when she finally appeared at eight am, rumpled and puffy eyed, it was obvious that the sex had been well below par, and the company ultimately unpalatable. She stared at me, sitting up inventing new pheromones that might preclude attachment, and then ran up the stairs to her bedroom. Out of sympathy for her unsatisfying liaison I refrained from comment, and she seemed to find this harder to bear than my customary sarcasm.

Now here is my opportunity to observe Watson engaged in the chase. Will it help me understand why she has had no real boyfriend since we met?

Whatever Watson says has made my cousin smirk. They are still holding hands. He has angled his face away from me so I cannot lipread, but whatever he says next makes Watson smile and look down. I cannot see her colour rise in this darkened room, but it is clear that she is blushing.

I don't want to know any more. Watson as a sexual being with my cousin as her chosen object: too much after a long day. My curiosity about her prior near-celibacy will have to remain unsatisfied.

I turn away, thinking about a cab back to the hotel, but John's hand is on my arm. "Calm down," he says, adding obscurely, "He's just winding me up."

I shrug.

"We're going to see H again some day, aren't we?" he asks conversationally.

"Probably."

"You know who he is," John states.

I do not answer.

"You're not gloating," John muses. "That means that Joan's right - H is someone you know, and someone... you're protecting!"

"No," I say quickly. "I'm not protecting him. Just - other people. From that knowledge."

John is biting his lip as if working out whether to torture the information from me. He seems ok with either answer.

Watson arrives, leading my cousin by the hand. "Time to go," she announces, and there is a tension in her voice, a vibrancy I have never witnessed before.

We emerge from the Gardenia past couples in an array of configurations, and stand in the street. I seem to be the only one who does not find it awkward. But then I will be getting a cab on my own. Foolish. I ought to have acquired some female company for the night. A suite at the Shard would tempt plenty of takers. But I am tired, and out of sorts. I am not sure I could fake humanity long enough to enjoy the eventual relief.

"We can share part of the way," says my cousin, raising his arm. A cab materialises.

We get in, Watson sitting beside me. This is her chance to explain to me that she will be waking up in Baker Street tomorrow. She says nothing, though, but gives me many sideways glances. Guilt. Maybe pity. Neither of which I want from her. I clamp my jaw shut and look out of the window, ignoring her arm pressing into my side.

When the elbowing becomes too annoying I turn, thinking to be sarcastic, but stop as my gaze passes over my cousin and John.

My cousin has his phone in his left hand and is scowling at it. Clearly the internet is not up to scratch.

John is on his right, gazing out of the window with tired but calm eyes.

And between them, their hands rest on the seat, fingertips touching. As I blink, my cousin moves an inch to rest his middle finger over John's.

Oh. So all of that with Watson - John was correct, it was a wind-up, but not about John's lack of success with a beautiful woman, but about Watson's apparent success with my cousin. Not that John was troubled for one moment. And seeing this tiny yet potent display of connection, of possession, I understand why.

"Baker Street," declares the taxi driver, and my cousin leans forward and speaks to him, then springs out. He turns and leans back into the cab. "An unexpected pleasure," he says, offering me his hand.

I shake it, our grips matched. "Let's try not to repeat the experience too frequently. It would only diminish its appeal."

He smirks, and with a wink at Watson, whirls away.

The cab moves off and I turn to see my cousin bounding up the steps to his flat, energised and eager. The last thing I see as the cab swings round the corner is my cousin with his key in the door, his head turned to look back at John, and smiling with great tenderness and intent.

I fling myself into the empty seat opposite Watson and say, "Right," at nothing in particular.

"Didn't you know?" she asks, frowning at me.

"I suspected," I lie. I didn't suspect. I wondered, of course. But there was nothing, until now, to confirm the musings of my idle curiosity. The pair of them have hidden it completely. Given their positions, discretion is a logical choice. Yet it must be excruciating too.

To love and to be obliged to speak nothing outside the privacy of one's own bedroom, this must be torture. How can love be unsaid, undeclared? Love changes your very chemistry and you become the perfect proof of its existence.

When I loved Irene, the whole world knew it. It was written on me in large letters. For her life I could not have concealed it, and for months I believed that my indiscretion about our connection had killed her.

"It was pretty obvious," says Watson.

I try and fail to hide my incedrulity. But a cab is a small space, and we know each other well. I give a fierce frown to disguise my discomfort at being found, in this, the lesser detective.

"The way they look at each other," Watson says softly.

There is a wistfulness in her tone which jabs at me. I experience a moment of pure longing – for all the things which have been denied me in my life – and have to cough to drive it away.

When I look up again Watson is flopped in the seat, her earlier energy gone. Her mouth is pressed shut and her hands are clenched.

I may not have deduced my cousin's romantic soul, but I have been expecting this. "You're experiencing the drop," I say, gesturing at her across the cab. "A high octane day, hours of the adrenal gland pumping out the boosters, and then the inevitable denouement. Perfectly normal, Watson."

"I just - I was fine just now -"

We are at the Shard. The cabbie waves away my fare. My cousin told him something valuable, apparently. The next winner at Cheltenham or some such. I disembark and after a moment in which it becomes clear that she is near comatose, put my arm around Watson's waist and lift her out.

She lolls against me, high heels scraping the marble of the foyer. "Sherlock - sorry -"

"Your apology is not needed." I nod at the bell boy to open the lift, and scoop Watson into my arms. Her legs dangle. Luckily her footwear is fastened on. I cradle her head against my chest, my chin resting on her soft cheek. Despite the scent of the club and the London air on her, she still smells sweet to me. "Newlyweds," I whisper as the lift doors swish shut behind us. "Remember?" But she is already asleep.

* * *

Watson is in bed. I took off her shoes and pulled the duvet over her, turned off the light and shut the door behind me. Her exhaustion is fortuitous. I would not be pleasant company tonight.

I drag the monumental sofa to the edge of the room and cast myself down on it, looking up at the glass slope of the wall, and the odd purplish orange of the London sky above.

There are no stars, in London. Or New York. If you were on an island, out in Long Island Sound, you'd have a better chance of seeing the constellations. My late aunt spent some years in just such a spot, isolated and lonely, learning to imitate owls, among her great many other skills. She came back to the UK and lived the remainder of her life a hermit. We exchanged letters which revealed that she understood far more than would reasonably be expected of an elderly and reclusive person. The letters were sometimes incoherent, but always fascinating.

She should not have died. But Moriarty needed a way to bring me and my cousin together. A funeral must have seemed ideal. And my father had insisted I attend.

I came because I knew he would not. His own sister, a woman he had supported and helped, albeit in his cold, distant way, a woman, presumably, he had loved - and her funeral was deemed an insufficient incentive to make an appearance. I am rarely shamed into anything. But to allow my aunt to be memorialised in my absence, in the absence of my father - it stuck in my throat, along with all the things I grew sick of saying to him, and so I came.

And so did Moriarty.

I don't believe my aunt suffered. It was too expedient a death to waste cruelty on. But another vengeance is added to my to-do list, a different kind to the one I plotted for Irene, and I already have a plan for honouring the life of my remarkable aunt.

I have no such plan for my father. I will leave that alone for the present. It will not be mentioned. My cousin will contact me when he deems me ready to acknowledge H. No doubt we will then be obliged to have conversations. I am willing to put that off indefinitely. My only concession will be to create an agreement between us to break this damaging cycle. If I should ever have a son, he will not be called Sherlock.


	15. Fierce heart

At four am Watson appears in the bedroom doorway, wrapped in her duvet, and totters to my sofa.

"Watson. Are you all right?" I sit up on the sofa.

"May I sit with you? Just at the end." Her voice is thin and plaintive. She gestures at the tiny space between my shoes and the sofa arm "I won't take up any room -"

"There is ample space. What's wrong?" I catch a waft of hotel shower gel. Has she managed to freshen up while I have been asleep? When I slipped past her for my own quick ablutions, she seemed near-unconscious with exhaustion.

She curls up beside me, arms around her knees, duvet trailing to the carpet. "When I was kidnapped." She shuts her mouth suddenly.

I wait. Nothing else emerges. I have already expressed my horror and regret that this happened to her. She will not have forgotten that so it does not need repeating. What, then, is troubling her?

Her face is crunched up with frowning, with the effort to make an expression she cannot manage. "You've done so much for me," she says at last. She clears her throat, dabs her nose and eyes with the back of her hand. "Sorry. I'm ok."

I recoil at the idea of Watson in tears. Willing her just to recover, I nonetheless say, "You were magnificent today, Watson. Sit here awhile and do not for one moment think you have anything to apologise for."

We sit.

I stare straight ahead. Watson's presence, as usual, forces me to be still, to reflect and, on this occasion especially, be grateful that I am not alone.

"A favour," she says suddenly.

I turn my head. Already she looks better. The tears have vanished and in their place is calm determination. I can see a tremor running through her though, and feel it in her feet resting against my thigh. "Anything I can," I say, still cautious. (Anything bar group therapy, trite proverbs about fathers and how they show affection, or a trip to the London Dungeon.)

She seems embarrassed. "A - hug."

I gape at her.

"I - No, forget it," and she struggles to rise, with the duvet.

"You would not have said it if you didn't mean it, Watson," I say. Time for brisk action. I can certainly supply physical comfort if that is the favour she wants. I owe her a great deal.

I slide my arms around her and pull her against me as I fall back to a horizontal alignment on the cushions. I bring her head onto my chest and hold her in position. She doesn't say anything. It is hard for her to accept help, to acknowledge weakness. I understand that. No one likes to admit they cannot cope.

I lie still with her stiff and tense on top of me, and say nothing. She is surprised, and probably wondering if this is the start of some unwise seduction attempt. I cannot reassure her on that point without speaking. Any idea of patting or stroking her in a platonic way could be misread as sexual. Lying perfectly flat and still might mean many things, but it cannot mean, I plan to use you in your time of need for my own personal gratification.

She weighs a ton. For such a slight person she is heavy. It must be all muscle. Her protestations about single stick must be overcome. She would be a perfect opponent - apparently smaller and feeble, but made of strength.

It is odd, now I consider it. She is so strong that it seems unnatural for me to be comforting her, or trying to. All the same I will persist. I have little experience at this but instinct tells me that closeness and warmth have their own magic. If I lie here, Watson will rest, eventually will sleep, and my body heat will do what my words never could.

It will tell her that I value her. More than that - that I place her safety and wellbeing above that of everybody else. That I love her, if that is how she wishes to frame the idea. That I will always try to protect her, protect this, our friendship and the work we do together.

She has bare feet under the duvet. Out of consideration for her toes I kick off my own shoes. She is cold. I press her freezing feet between my own. The benefits of a fine woollen sock.

This seems to rouse her and she wriggles against me in a sinuous motion from shoulders to belly to hips . I hold her carefully, conscious of the boundaries we have always been eager to protect, and pull her head onto my shoulder as a better pillow. I am the sleeping surface, and yet, wishing to remain vigilant, I am awake. Mere sleep, with this sensuous woman warm on top of me, now in an attitude of careless intimacy - her right leg between mine, her hands resting on my biceps - would be impossible.

I have excellent control over my body, but the combination of warm heavy female, and trusting Watson, is a trial. My body giving away my impulses. Of course she was a medical professional. She understands the vagaries of the male physique. And anyway she is asleep.

Suddenly she lifts her head and shows me my latest error: that in fact she is fully awake, eyes bright and contemplative. Her breath is lemon scented, which I register as odd. I begin to say something about socks and the comparative temperature of extremity to core, when she kisses me. Mouth. Keenly.

Her lips are soft and warm and her fingers are urgent in my hair. I remain motionless and alert as she leans over me and looks me firmly in the eye. I understand. She is instructing me to buck up my ideas and respond.

"Ok?" she says.

"Um," I say. That is not what was in my head. My head was full of imagined objections - hers, mine - and allowable parameters.

She kisses me again with increased determination. Mouth, yes. Lips. Tongue. Oh.

It would be rude not to join in when she is so insistent. She has unevenly developed canines, her tongue has the unmistakable texture of a super-receptor (interesting and very useful, hmm) and overall Watson has ... technique. Her mouth is delicious and in a flash I am hungry. But there must be caution -

She breaks the kiss and sits up, rolls her eyes. A familiar Watson gesture, followed by an unfamiliar one: she unbuttons my shirt, sighs at the T shirt I am wearing underneath (the fact of it, I think, rather than its I Caught the Jackal slogan) and does the twirling finger motion beloved of impatient TV producers: get on with it, or in this case, off with it.

I obey.

She smiles, then blinks at me. Waiting. Eyebrow flicker. An air of despairing expectation. -Gradually I catch on.

I lift her own tee off over her head. Beneath is a small grey tank. No bra. (She was wearing one earlier). She blinks at me again and does not speak.

I realise that for my part, I could not speak if I tried. I am silenced by her determination and control. My sole vocal contribution thus far has been Um.

She gazes at me, her chin raised slightly in challenge, or ... demand. Her throat lengthened and laid bare, catching the lights from the City towers outside the window. Oh, again. She is ordering me to worship her...now... for starters, her neck. She is demanding comfort, or offering it. Without uttering a word.

It is incredibly erotic.

I oblige.

* * *

She wishes this and so this is what we do. I am hardly passive, but I am completely guided by her. And I admit, now, that I want this, to know her like this, to uncover one more of her mysteries. She holds my hands, guides me, tugs away my clothes, exposes me, inspects me, indicates the removal of her own clothes - how quick I am to respond! - she presses us together and makes it clear that this is no theoretical exploration - she is unstoppable.

Conversation is almost non-existent. We must find our way tonight, as so often, without words. Until -

Watson pauses, her thumbs on my hipbones, hair brushing my belly, and looks at me. Whatever she is about to say cannot be as perfect as her kisses, so I haul her up to me and bring her mouth to mine, her skin silky against me, my fingers relishing her vertebrae. She laughs, and draws herself free.

Reluctantly I release her and she says, "I was just checking you wanted - "

"Yes," I say. "Watson, it's me. Yes, to anything. Everything."

"Everything." She raises her eyebrows. Her fingertips on my navel. She may think I do not know how her fierce heart is stifled by her usual behaviours. Unconventiontal Watson, and lipstick does not begin to disguise that. "Ok."

"Ok," I echo, and she dips her head, her lips on my ink as I sprawl willingly beneath her.

And that is the end of chitchat. I do not have freedom to roam, but I am learning to live with it. I have an excellent guide. And while there is no talk between us, there is certainly not silence. Watson elicits from me communication more telling than words. I cannot speak. I have to remember to breathe. She is astonishing. She is wonderful. She is unrivalled.

Meanwhile Watson saves her mouth for other pleasures, hers, I hope, but definitely mine. My amazement barely has time to surface before overload begins.

"But," I say, breathless and clinging to her in a way she seems to find gratifying. I am trying not to leave fingermarks on her shoulders but suspect it may be too late.

But what about you?

She smiles, holds me, strokes my hair. Her kisses become gentle on my jaw as she savours her triumph over me. Her hand trickles over my chest while I lie trying to regain use of my limbs, my lungs. Her fingers caress me, travelling downwards but it is my hand she reaches for, and then I understand.

I am still under orders, but have a little more scope for invention. So: good. I prop on one elbow and study her face as my hand goes where she chooses. She gazes back at me, steady and knowing as always.

I have had my usual defenses efficiently removed and I know she can see me, read me, know me, in these moments, with no barrier of conversation. She knows that my words do not, usually, say what I mean.

Was this her aim? Does she refuse intimacy with someone so self-protective but, desiring me (or perhaps just desiring sex, it has not been clear, perhaps I am only convenient, being on the spot, and any man might stand in-?) she has taken down my barriers so that she can proceed in something like a usual manner, with a warm and helpless member of the human race. I am levelled by blissful exhaustion. I could be anyone.

She does not say. Her strength, as always, humbles me. I was cautious of using her, in various ways. But she is the powerhouse in our friendship, and I have been remarkably blind to that. Now I only wish to please her, to return the favour, for I might never again find myself in the lucky position of being there when she wants someone.

I am persuading myself to be relieved - that is, I am relieved - that I do not appear to be personally desired. That is acceptable, and within my own usual range of sexual contact. I can become reconciled to that idea.

I hold her, stroke her hair. I may not form attachments with the people I sleep with, but I like to think I am a considerate lover, where consideration, rather than, say, abandon, or just plain nasty, is required. Watson will always have my consideration.

I kiss her, nuzzling her cheek and warm, sweet-smelling neck as I seek to repay her for her earlier attentions. There is trust and affection between us. I never aspired to even that much. It is enough.

She closes her eyes, breathes deeply, clutches me hard, and her lips part.

And then, in the midst of all our wordlessness, there is one word. My name.

And then silence.

Oh Watson.

She clings to me and I to her, but although her grip is firm, I feel myself falling.


	16. The laughter of glass

I am woken by motion. Watson is easing away from me and daylight shows in the room. I wrap my arms around her, momentarily preventing her from getting up. "Morning."

"Oh hey. Morning." She shakes her hair away from her face and gives me a brief smile. "You ok?"

"When am I not?"

We are still naked, and given that her lithe and interesting body is in close contact with me, I am in fact feeling a renewal of keen enthusiasm towards her.

She bats me away with a laugh. "Come on, we've got to get up."

I subside.

She leans down and kisses me matter-of-factly, as if our liaison is routine and accepted. I am enchanted. I cannot think of a gesture which expresses it and while I am considering she whispers, "Thank you," and slides off the sofa.

Later I find her at the breakfast trolley, poking at a steaming muslin of twigs in a kettle. Herb tea. She pours me a cup, glances at the clothes-strewn sofa, and says without adornment, "You're ok with this right?"

"I am open to - " I cannot momentarily think of what it is exactly that I am offering.

She comes over to me with the tea. "We were just fooling around, Sherlock. I know we have to work together. I'm ok with it. I hope you are too."

"Watson, I had a marvellous time. I was merely expressing a - "

_Hope_.

I shrug, my hands trying to form the words my brain refuses. "I - "

_Happy to be of service? Any time? You're welcome?_

I can think of nothing which is neither unnaturally servile nor downright creepy.

She gives a sweet sparkling smile, open and full of lively humour. "Me too."

Xxxx

We are packed and ready to return home. Sunlight falls through the glass wall into our suite, and every hard surface bounces sparks around the lounge, like joy, like the laughter of glass.

Watson has been quiet, checking on me over the top of her set book (_Haptic communication and the science of touch_, hmm) and making notes I cannot read whilst apparently not taking her eyes off me.

I am filled with pleasant aches and the realisation that my dark reflections have simmered down and are now ready for filing, for addition to the heavy catalogue of my personal history. Instead, memories of Watson are to the fore. Her opposing modes of gentleness and insistence. Her preference for touch over speech (on this occasion. More experience of her preferences is required.) Her unquestionable ability to flatten me, take me apart, remove my resistance and make me forget I ever had any. All this and we never even got as far as -

"Our cab is in ten minutes," Watson says, closing her book. She puts her glasses with it, into her flight bag.

"I am ready." Last night I was unprepared. But now I will be ever on the alert for signs of an imminent repetition of intimate activities.

It will be a distraction, of course. Watson, wandering around the brownstone in a T shirt and tiny shorts. Watson reaching to pin a new thought on the board, her glasses hiding her frown. Watson eating chicken wings with her fingers, offering me the plate even though I have already taken three without asking. Watson, standing quietly beside me in Gregson's office, her eyes on me and her scent discernible from the melee of NYPD olfactory assaults.

I will buy her a replacement Guerlain at Heathrow. I won't give it to her, of course. More fun to let her find it when she is looking for something I've borrowed. Her missing Louboutin, for example.

Watson as distraction is disruptive, but no more than, say, a ringing phone. I can answer or I can ignore. Actually I don't hear the phone if I am concentrating. So it's fine. Things will be as they were.

"We didn't see much of London," Watson remarks, crossing to the window.

"There will undoubtedly be other times," I say.

She sighs. Perhaps she has not been here before. I still do not know. Why have I invested so little in deducing her? -Because I was afraid that unravelling the mystery would destroy it.

Watson unravelled me pretty definitively last night. And characterised it as just fooling around. What would purposeful sex be like?

This is the kind of thought which started me down the road to wanting her.

I shake it off. There is a journey to be made, and a home - our home - to go to. If she is able to put thoughts of our liaison from her mind, how much more easily should I be able to?

"Come on," I tell her, and after a brief inner debate, take hold of her hand. "Before we go - let's take the lift all the way to the top. There's a viewing area and I feel duty bound to make sure you see it, London's answer to the Empire State."

"Ok." She is smiling again. Her hand slips naturally from mine as we collect our belongings. She does not need guidance to the lift and neither of us are the hand-holding type. Good.

As we marvel at the vista I find conflicting urges swimming within me. The status quo has been restored and we can continue our work back at home.

But also I feel an impulse to draw her close to me, rest her against me and enjoy the sensation of closeness and warmth which comes from affectionate contact with a friend, a partner, a lover.

The sky is bright, silver, distinctly English. The early autumn air will be cold beyond the glass, and the first leaves on the pavements promise an extended winter. Amongst all the crisp clarity, clasping Watson to me in breathless passion seems inappropriate.

I compromise. Words must suffice. "Watson. In the work, and... in yourself - you delight me."

I risk a look sideways at her, expecting her to speak, but she does not. She is gazing at the city, two feet away and motionless. I listen but can make nothing of her silence. We watch the view for another moment or two, and retreat.

But then, in the lift, her hand sneaks into mine, warm and firm. She is not looking at me, but at her bag on the floor, as if checking its luggage label. Likewise I examine the ceiling and run through lift cable-snap scenarios while drawing comfort and delicious memory from her touch.

This - our night together - may go nowhere. What happens in London may, indeed, stay there. But with her fingers in mine, giving warmth, receiving it, I feel hopeful. Our partnership is intact. Watson's actions of the last twenty-four hours have been exemplary. (And she has still kept up with her reading.) Our friendship is as strong as it has ever been. Passion need not be friendship's opposite.

I am not, now, convinced that last night changed anything fundamental between us, just reaffirmed the things we never talk about: I have Watson, and she certainly, irrevocably, has me.

It is a long way from the fifty-fourth floor to the ground, and we hold each other close all the way down.

* * *

**Epilogue**

_What are you going to do with the money?_

Text on a screen. The library quiet behind me. Watson upstairs in bed. I will go and check on her later. (Check: meaning, I will go and stand by her bed and hope she wakes up and is keen. Nothing doing so far.)

_Not sure. Invest in a particular property, I think. You? _

Baker Street is three thousand miles away and yet my cousin's words appear instantly. The magic of technology. _Similar. I think I would do better with a housekeeper than a landlady._

A pause, then I type. _Sherlock_.

_Yes?_

I never address my cousin by name. But this moment calls for it. _We must not become him. We must break the pattern. That's all._

_It was an intriguing idea,_ comes the reply from London.

_It was an immoral idea._ My fingers are loud on the keyboard.

_I am not a moral man. _The sardonic tone loud and clear.

I take a deep breath. I appreciate his arguments, unexpressed though they are, but I cannot support them. _Nevertheless. It stops here. No more Moriartys. No more Adlers. No more Sherlocks. No more Watsons._

A long pause. I wonder if he is going to lie to me. That would be tiresome. Much as I deprecate his abilities, he would be an opponent to fear.

Then the reply appears. _I only need one Watson._

I cannot resist. _Awww_.

_I trust Joan is well? _ he asks and I freeze. He knows. How does he know? He and her, whispering and giggling in the club. Did he - suggest it?

_Your silence is telling,_ he types then. _Don't worry, though. It was her idea._

I really, really hate being deduced. More than I hate his implication that I was in need of relief. He is the repressed one. _We are as we have always been_, I type. It is true. I_And John?_

_As it ever was_, comes back languidly.

We are reverting to our usual relationship. He is extremely irritating. I am trying extremely hard to irritate him back. Normality is restored.

_I have work to do,_ I type abruptly.

_As do I. _

_Goodnight._

_It is morning here._

_I *know*._

The session ends without further signoff. I sit back in my chair and crack my knuckles behind my head.

"Your cousin," says Watson behind me. I jump. How does she approach so silently? "How is he? Everything OK?"

"Fine." Did he put you up to that seduction? If not, then why? Why did you undress me, touch me, pleasure me and now why are we trying to act as if it was meaningless? It was not meaningless, that is, I assign meaning to it in an appropriate amount, that is, and primarily, it was fun, and exciting, and unfinished.

She lays her hand on my shoulder. Her eyelashes are lowered as she smiles down at me. "It's late. You should be in bed."

"There's a case -" A mountain of cases. New York has run amok in our absence.

She smiles. "OK. Another time."

She turns and walks softly away. I huff and call up the most interesting of the cases on the screen. I am halfway to identifying the fraudster before I realise what she said. I exclaim, clap my hand to my forehead.

Situation normal, indeed.


End file.
